- Lived:
- 1729(?)–1797 · Dublin, then London and Beaconsfield, England
- Tradition:
- Anglo-Irish statesman-philosopher; founder of modern political conservatism
- The Big Idea:
- A society is a partnership between the dead, the living, and the unborn — so real reform works with inherited institutions, prudently, and never hands unlimited power to anyone armed only with a theory.
- In their words:
- "A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation."
- If you remember one thing:
- The man who wrote the founding book of conservatism spent his whole career fighting the powerful — for America, for Ireland, for India — because his one constant enemy was arbitrary power, in whatever costume it wore.