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Edmund Burke Quotes about War

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When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Edmund Burke
Honesty, Integrity, War
Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770) See Edmund Burke 28; Mill 18

Wars are just to those to whom they are necessary.

Edmund Burke
War, Total War
"Reflections on the Revolution in France" by Edmund Burke, 1790.

To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed toward a love to our country and to mankind. The interest of that portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it away for their own personal advantage.

Edmund Burke
Country, Peace, War
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity; the rest is crime.

Edmund Burke
Country, War, Men
Edmund Burke (1855). “The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke”, p.204

We are in a war of a peculiar nature. It is not with an ordinary community, which is hostile or friendly as passion or as interest may veer about: not with a state which makes war through wantonness, and abandons it through lassitude. We are at war with a system, which by its essence, is inimical to all other governments, and which makes peace or war, as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war. It has, by its essence, a faction of opinion, and of interest, and of enthusiasm, in every country.

Edmund Burke
Country, War, Passion

War never leaves where it found a nation.

Edmund Burke
War, Found, Nations
Edmund Burke (1826). “The Works of Edmund Burke”, p.163

War is the matter which fills all history; and consequently the only, or almost the only, view in which we can see the external of political society is in a hostile shape: and the only actions to which we have always seen, and still see, all of them intent, are such as tend to the destruction of one another.

Edmund Burke
War, Views, Political
Edmund Burke (1963). “Edmund Burke: Selected Writings and Speeches”, p.58, Transaction Publishers

"War," says Machiavelli, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.

Edmund Burke
Peace, War, Military
"A Vindication of Natural Society". Book by Edmund Burke, 1756.

I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.

Edmund Burke
War, Long, People
Edmund Burke (1855). “The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke: Charge against Warren Hastings concluded”, p.189

Laws are commanded to hold their tongues among arms; and tribunals fall to the ground with the peace they are no longer able to uphold.

Edmund Burke
War, Fall, Law
Edmund Burke (2014). “Revolutionary Writings: Reflections on the Revolution in France and the First Letter on a Regicide Peace”, p.31, Cambridge University Press

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

Edmund Burke
Peace, War, Tyrants
'Letter to a Member of the National Assembly' (1791) p. 25

In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.

Edmund Burke
Country, War, Blood
Edmund Burke (1790). “Reflections on the Revolution in France: And on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event. In a Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentleman in Paris”, p.49

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