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The question is not whether you have a right to render people miserable, but whether it is not in your best interest to make them happy.

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
People
Miserable
Question
Interest
Whether
Happy
Best
Right
Make
Render

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A nation is not conquered which is perpetually to be conquered.
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My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.
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The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.
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To govern according to the sense and agreement of the interests of the people is a great and glorious object of governance. This object cannot be obtained but through the medium of popular election, and popular election is a mighty evil.
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To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
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Some degree of novelty must be one of the materials in almost every instrument which works upon the mind and curiosity blends itself, more or less, with all our pleasures.
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Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation.
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To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
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The individual is foolish the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right.
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Equity money is dynamic and debt money is static.
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Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
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Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.
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Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings.
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Responsibility prevents crimes.
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In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.
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To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to deprecate the value of freedom itself.
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It is the nature of tyranny and rapacity never to learn moderation from the ill-success of first oppressions on the contrary, all oppressors, all men thinking highly of the methods dictated by their nature, attribute the frustration of their desires to the want of sufficient rigor.
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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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Teach me, O lark! with thee to greatly rise, to exalt my soul and lift it to the skies.
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Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.
Edmund Burke