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You can never plan the future by the past.

Edmund Burke

All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing as they must if they believe they can do nothing. There is nothing worse because the council of despair is declaration of irresponsibility; it is Pilate washing his hands.
EDMUND BURKE

Council Evil Hands Irresponsibility Necessary Success Wash
Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
EDMUND BURKE

Betrayal Himself Industry Opinion Representation Sacrifice Service
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
Those who have been intoxicated with power… can never willingly abandon it.
EDMUND BURKE

Abandonment Power Willing
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
An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.
EDMUND BURKE

Difficult Impossible Silence Talk
Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.
EDMUND BURKE

Art Creation Essential Man Religion Theory
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.
EDMUND BURKE

Alone Force Government Moments Temporary
Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.
EDMUND BURKE

Destiny History Repeat
Men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told their duty.
EDMUND BURKE

Love Man Power
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
EDMUND BURKE

Flatter Generosity Receive
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
It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
EDMUND BURKE

Exact Greatness Nature
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
EDMUND BURKE

Evil Goodness Man Necessary
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

Age Future Hope Kind Live Man Present
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

You can never plan the future by the past.

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You can never plan the future by the past.

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