Edmund Burke

Political theorist and philosopher #EdmundBurke died in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England on this day in 1797 (aged 68).

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

--from "Reflections on the Revolution in France" (1790)

The most important works of Edmund Burke, one of the greatest political thinker of the past three centuries, are gathered here in one comprehensive volume. 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/book/240453/reflections-on-the-revolution-in-france-and-other-writings/