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Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

Edmund Burke

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Edmund Burke
Age: 68 †
Born: 1729
Born: January 12
Died: 1797
Died: July 9
Philosopher
Politician
Statesman
Writer
Dublin city
War
Pretexts
Pretext
Antiwar
Tyrants
Seldom
Peace

More quotes by Edmund Burke

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Hypocrisy is no cheap vice nor can our natural temper be masked for many years together.
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For there is in mankind an unfortunate propensity to make themselves, their views and their works, the measure of excellence in every thing whatsoever
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This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature.
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Man is by his constitution a religious animal atheism is against not only our reason, but our instincts.
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Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation.
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In all forms of government the people is the true legislator.
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The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men to each govern himself, and suffer any artificial positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience.
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To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
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I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.
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Guilt was never a rational thing it distorts all the faculties of the human mind, it perverts them, it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason, it puts him into confusion.
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I despair of ever receiving the same degree of pleasure from the most exalted performances of genius which I felt in childhood from pieces which my present judgment regards as trifling and contemptible.
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Woman is not made to be the admiration of everybody , but the happiness of one.
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It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs.
Edmund Burke
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Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.
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Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power but they will never look to anything but power for their relief.
Edmund Burke
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People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws and those who have much hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.
Edmund Burke
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To be struck with His power, it is only necessary to open our eyes.
Edmund Burke
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The individual is foolish the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right.
Edmund Burke
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Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.
Edmund Burke
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A good parson once said that where mystery begins religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins justice ends?
Edmund Burke