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To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.

Edmund Burke

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
EDMUND BURKE

Bad Law Worst
Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue.
EDMUND BURKE

Gentle Gradual Human Mindset Power
Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.
EDMUND BURKE

Infant Original Planning Thinking
But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.
EDMUND BURKE

Greatness Liberty Madness Possible Restraint Virtue Wisdom
In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.
EDMUND BURKE

Errors History Instruction Kind Man Past Volume Wisdom
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.
EDMUND BURKE

Achievement Greatness Man Object Road View
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.
EDMUND BURKE

Color Determination Greatness Happiness Oppression Pretend
There is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
EDMUND BURKE

Act Boundary Feeling Imagination Influence Man Passion
It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
EDMUND BURKE

Humanity Justice Law Myself Reason
Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.
EDMUND BURKE

Agreement Politics
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.
EDMUND BURKE

Appetite Liberty Man Qualification
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.
EDMUND BURKE

Awake Greatness Liberty People Security Superior Truth
By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
EDMUND BURKE

Mistake Nation Power Small
Men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told their duty.
EDMUND BURKE

Love Man Power
Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
EDMUND BURKE

Government Injustice Oppression
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
EDMUND BURKE

Greatness Himself Mistake

To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.

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To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Edmund Burke Quotes