Edmund Burke Quotes
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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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No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.
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One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.
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Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.
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All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.
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He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
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Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations - wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.
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All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.
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Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.
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No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
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Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.
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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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The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
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There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world.
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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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Laws, like houses, lean on one another.
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Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.
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To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
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The traveller has reached the end of the journey!
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There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
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He was not merely a chip of the old Block, but the old Block itself.
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Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.
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Manners are of more importance than laws. The law can touch us here and there, now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation like that of the air we breathe in.
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Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.