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Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands is the care of our own time.

Edmund Burke

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Edmund Burke
Age: 68 †
Born: 1729
Born: January 12
Died: 1797
Died: July 9
Philosopher
Politician
Statesman
Writer
Dublin city
Hands
Certainty
Care
Generation
Wells
Generations
Well
Perhaps
Right
Trust
Men
Question
Time
Present
Moral
Wholly

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To execute laws is a royal office to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust.
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By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.
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Nothing so effectually deadens the taste of the sublime as that which is light and radiant.
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In all forms of government the people is the true legislator.
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Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.
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A nation without means of reform is without means of survival.
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Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.
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Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle.
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Not men but measures a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement.
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When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators the instruments, not the guides, of the people.
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Contempt is not a thing to be despised. It may be borne with a calm and equal mind, but no man, by lifting his head high, can pretend that he does not perceive the scorns that are poured down on him from above.
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Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.
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To speak of atrocious crime in mild language is treason to virtue.
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The people of England well know that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation and a sure principle of transmission, without at all excluding a principle of improvement.
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England and Ireland may flourish together. The world is large enough for both of us. Let it be our care not to make ourselves too little for it.
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Public calamity is a mighty leveller.
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History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.
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The great must submit to the dominion of prudence and of virtue, or none will long submit to the dominion of the great.
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The conduct of a losing party never appears right: at least it never can possess the only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar judgements-success.
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But whoever is a genuine follower of Truth, keeps his eye steady upon his guide, indifferent whither he is led, provided that she is the leader.
Edmund Burke