Burke said society is a partnership between the living, the dead, and the unborn

In Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Edmund Burke attacked the Revolution's attempt to rebuild government from abstract first principles, arguing a society's customs and institutions encode generations of trial and error that no single generation has the right to tear up overnight. He described the social contract itself as a partnership between the living, the dead, and those yet to be born. The book became the founding text of modern conservative political thought.

— Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France — 1790
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