When we speak of the commerce with our colonies, fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Realities of colonial commerce surpass fiction or imagination.
- In plain terms
- Trade facts are more interesting than stories.
- What can you take from it?
- Reality of commerce exceeds fiction.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Is reality always better than fiction?
- How do we tell trade stories?
Another view
Stories can still explain complex trade better.
More from Edmund Burke
Young man, there is America - which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you …
Permalink to quote #64 A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
Permalink to quote #66 The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.
Permalink to quote #63
Related quotes
It always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the imagination, while the truth is that there's not a single line in all my work that does n…
Gabriel Garcia MarquezGabriel Garcia Marquez quote #1 No poet, in his greatest imaginings, could conceive of anything greater than the real;
Don MillerDon Miller quote #5 I can imagine anything! That's the trouble with me. I can imagine things now - this minute. I could even make them sound all right, but of course none of them …
Agatha ChristieAgatha Christie quote #22