He augments the power of his enemy by the very means he must take to contend with him.
Edmund Burke: “He augments the power of his enemy by the very means he must take to contend with him.”
Editor's note · Context
In his critique of the French Revolution, Burke observes a paradoxical situation where one's efforts to contend with an enemy inadvertently strengthen that enemy.
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A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
They look upon the legal hereditary succession of their crown as among their rights, not as among their wrongs,--as a benefit, not as a grievance,--as a security for their liberty, not as a badge of servitude.
Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.
Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation; but their disposition, and habits, and mode of accomplishing their designs must remain the same.





