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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.

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
Wells
Conservation
Without
Improvement
Well
Principle
People
England
Principles
Furnishes
Sure
Excluding
Idea
Transmission
Ideas
Inheritance

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Between craft and credulity, the voice of reason is stifled.
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Law and arbitrary power are at eternal enmity.
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True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting.
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Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle.
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To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government that is, to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.
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Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.
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Delusion and weakness produce not one mischief the less, because they are universal.
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The whole compass of the language is tried to find sinonimies [synonyms] and circumlocutions for massacres and murder. Things never called by their common names. Massacre is sometimes called agitation, sometimes effervescence, sometimes excess sometimes too continued an exercise of revolutionary power.
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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.
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It is the love of the people it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army 168 and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.
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The esteem of wise and good men is the greatest of all temporal encouragements to virtue and it is a mark of an abandoned spirit to have no regard to it.
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When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment, we have no compass to govern us, nor can we know distinctly to what port to steer.
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Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.
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Circumspection and caution are part of wisdom.
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Despots govern by terror. They know that he who fears God fears nothing else and therefore they eradicate from the mind, through their Voltaire, their Helvetius, and the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of fear which generates true courage.
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If any ask me what a free government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so,and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.
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My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.
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Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.
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The great inlet by which a colour for oppression has entered into the world is by one man's pretending to determine concerning the happiness of another.
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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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