Political Quotes

Edmund Burke: Desperate situations produce desperate councils and desperate measures.

On the record
Desperate situations produce desperate councils and desperate measures.
Said by
Edmund Burke

Editor's note · Context

Burke warns that dire circumstances often lead to rash decisions and actions.

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Jan 1, 1790

No experience has taught us that in any other course or method than that of an hereditary crown our liberties can be regularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as our hereditary right.

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If all the absurd theories of lawyers and divines were to vitiate the objects in which they are conversant, we should have no law and no religion left in the world.

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Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deserved their fame for wisdom, if they had found no security for their freedom, but in rendering their government feeble in its operations and precarious in its tenure,--if they had been able…

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