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Government is the exercise of all the great qualities of the human mind.

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
Humans
Great
Mind
Qualities
Exercise
Quality
Government
Human

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Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.
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The march of the human mind is slow.
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Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty it withers the powers of his under- standing, and makes his mind paralytic.
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Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy of superstition.
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Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.
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It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss of the object , than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist.
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Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.
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Never, no never, did Nature say one thing, and wisdom another.
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A speculative despair is unpardonable where it our duty to act.
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Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.
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What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real purposes, you must first possess the means of knowing the fitness of your man and then you must retain some hold upon him by personal obligation or dependence.
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By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
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There ought to be system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
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To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.
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As the rose-tree is composed of the sweetest flowers and the sharpest thorns, as the heavens are sometimes overcast—alternately tempestuous and serene—so is the life of man intermingled with hopes and fears, with joys and sorrows, with pleasure and pain.
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I despair of ever receiving the same degree of pleasure from the most exalted performances of genius which I felt in childhood from pieces which my present judgment regards as trifling and contemptible.
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Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.
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Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.
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The greatest crimes do not arise from a want of feeling for others but from an over-sensibilit y for ourselves and an over-indulgence to our own desires
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