"The very name of a politician, a statesman, is sure to cause terror and hatred; it has always connected with it the ideas of treachery, cruelty, fraud, and tyranny."
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Quote collection
Edmund Burke quotes (page 22 of 25)
492 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"It is undoubtedly the business of ministers very much to consult the inclinations of the people, but they ought to take great care that they do not receive that inclination from the few persons who may happen to approach them."
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"The great Error of our Nature is, not to know where to stop, not to be satisfied with any reasonable Acquirement; not to compound with our Condition; but to lose all we have gained by an insatiable Pursuit after more."
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"In their nomination to office they will not appoint to the exercise of authority as to a pitiful job, but as to a holy function."
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"England and Ireland may flourish together. The world is large enough for both of us. Let it be our care not to make ourselves too little for it."
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"Among precautions against ambition, it may not be amiss to take precautions against our own. I must fairly say, I dread our own power and our own ambition: I dread our being too much dreaded."
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"He that borrows the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own; he that uses that of a superior elevates his own to the stature of that he contemplates."
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"Nothing less will content me, than wholeAmerica."
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"The power of discretionary disqualification by one law of Parliament, and the necessity of paying every debt of the Civil List by another law of Parliament, if suffered to pass unnoticed, must establish such a fund of rewards and terrors as will make Parliament the best appendage and support of arbitrary power that ever was invented by the wit of man."
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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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"Public calamity is a mighty leveller."
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"In such a strait the wisest may well be perplexed and the boldest staggered."
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"Knowledge of those unalterable Relations which Providence has ordained that every thing should bear to every other...To these we should conform in good Earnest; and not think to force Nature, and the whole Order of her System, by a Compliance with our Pride, and Folly, to conform to our artificial Regulations."
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"Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures."
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"Nothing ought to be more weighed than the nature of books recommended by public authority. So recommended, they soon form the character of the age."
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"Futurity is the great concern of mankind."
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"The moment that government appears at market, the principles of the market will be subverted."
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"Prudence is a quality incompatible with vice, and can never be effectively enlisted in its cause."
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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."
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"Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found."
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