Edmund Burke Quotes About Power
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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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Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue.
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Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to anything but power for their relief.
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Law and arbitrary power are at eternal enmity.
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Those who have been intoxicated with power... can never willingly abandon it.
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The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
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Nothing, indeed, but the possession of some power can with any certainty discover what at the bottom is the true character of any man.
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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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I know of nothing sublime which is not some modification of power.
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People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.
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We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.
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Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself.
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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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All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust, and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.
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For as wealth is power, so all power will infallibly draw wealth to itself by some means or other; and when men are left no way of ascertaining their profits but by their means of obtaining them, those means will be increased to infinity.
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