Edmund Burke was born in Dublin, Ireland on this day in 1729,
"Superstition is the religion of feeble minds."
--from "Reflections on the Revolution in France"
--from "Reflections on the Revolution in France"
Accompanying his influential masterpiece, Reflections on the Revolution in France, is a selection of pamphlets, speeches, public letters, private correspondence and, for the first time, two important and previously uncollected early essays. Philosopher, statesman, and founder of conservatism, Burke was a dazzling orator and a visionary theorist who spent his long political career fighting abuses of power. He wrote at a time of great change, against the backdrop of the revolt of the American colonies, the expansion of the British Empire, the collapse of Ireland, and the French Revolution. Burke argued passionately in support of the American revolutionaries and in equally impassioned opposition to the horrors of the unfolding French Revolution. Making a case for upholding established rights and customs, and advocating incremental reform rather than radical revolutionary change, Burke’s writings have profoundly influenced modern democracies up to the present day. READ an excerpt here:http://knopfdoubleday.com/…/reflections-on-the-revolution-…/
Edmund Burke—born on this day 1729—is best known for his criticism of the French revolution. The statesman was a keen defender of liberty, however, pushing to curb the slave trade a quarter of a century before it was abolished
