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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
Pretexts
Pretext
Antiwar
Tyrants
Seldom
Peace
War

More quotes by Edmund Burke

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Fellowship in treason is a bad ground of confidence.
Edmund Burke
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It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere.
Edmund Burke
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Continue to instruct the world and - whilst we carry on a poor unequal conflict with the passions and prejudices of our day, perhaps with no better weapons than other passions and prejudices of our own - convey wisdom to future generations.
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A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
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One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.
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The true way to mourn the dead is to take care of the living who belong to them.
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Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.
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He that accuses all mankind of corruption ought to remember that he is sure to convict only one.
Edmund Burke
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Society is indeed a contract. ... It is a partnership in all science a partnership in all art a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.
Edmund Burke
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The esteem of wise and good men is the greatest of all temporal encouragements to virtue and it is a mark of an abandoned spirit to have no regard to it.
Edmund Burke
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There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men, and by acting with promptitude, decision, and steadiness on that belief.
Edmund Burke
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Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.
Edmund Burke
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The very name of a politician, a statesman, is sure to cause terror and hatred it has always connected with it the ideas of treachery, cruelty, fraud, and tyranny.
Edmund Burke
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Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new impositions any bungler can add to the old but is it altogether wise to have no other bounds to your impositions than the patience of those who are to bear them?
Edmund Burke
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The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
Edmund Burke
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I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard than in the tomb of the Capulets.
Edmund Burke
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Equity money is dynamic and debt money is static.
Edmund Burke
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Responsibility prevents crimes.
Edmund Burke
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All the forces of darkness need to succeed ... is for the people to do nothing.
Edmund Burke
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Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. If parsimony were to be considered as one of the kinds of that virtue, there is, however, another and a higher economy. Economy is a distinctive virtue, and consists not in saving, but in selection.
Edmund Burke