"Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director and regulator, the standard of them all."
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Quote collection
Edmund Burke quotes (page 7 of 25)
492 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Circumspection and caution are part of wisdom."
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"Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement."
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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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"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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"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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"It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere."
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"Never, no never, did Nature say one thing, and wisdom another."
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"There is a courageous wisdom; there is also a false, reptile prudence, the result not of caution but of fear."
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"What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man."
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"The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered."
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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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"That the greatest security of the people, against the encroachments and usurpations of their superiors, is to keep the Spirit of Liberty constantly awake, is an undeniable truth"
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"To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed toward a love to our country and to mankind. The interest of that portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it away for their own personal advantage."
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"When a great man has some one object in view to be achieved in a given time, it may be absolutely necessary for him to walk out of all the common roads."
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"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."
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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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"The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blanches, the thought that never wanders, the purpose that never wavers - these are the masters of victory."
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"[Slavery] is a weed that grows in every soil."
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"It is hard to say whether doctors of law or divinity have made the greater advances in the lucrative business of mystery."
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