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As much injustice and tyranny has been practised in a few months by a French democracy, as in all the arbitrary monarchies in Europe in the forty years of my observation.

— Edmund Burke

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Source and credibility

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Source: Letter to Captain Thomas Mercer (26 February 1790), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 96
Source quality: Secondhand citation Quoted from another book or article rather than from the original.

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People must be governed in a manner agreeable to their temper and disposition; and men of free character and spirit must be ruled with, at least, some condescension to this spirit and this character.

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The rights of the people are every thing, as they ought to be in the true and natural order of things.

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Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.

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I am well aware, that men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told of their duty.

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The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!

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All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.

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There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation (1769)

Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.

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Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770)

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

Speech at a County Meeting of Buckinghamshire (1784)

You can never plan the future by the past.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Edmund Burke (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.