Edmund Burke Quotes
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All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.
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If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
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Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.
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Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.
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Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond, which originally made, and must still preserve the unity of the empire.
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All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.
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Custom reconciles us to everything.
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He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
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I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.
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When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
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Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.
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Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
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Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.
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A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
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By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
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The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.
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Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.
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The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.
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The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!
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Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.
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People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.
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Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
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We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.
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Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.