Political Quotes

Edmund Burke: In these adventures it was not an enemy we had to vanquish, but a cemetery to conquer.

On the record
In these adventures it was not an enemy we had to vanquish, but a cemetery to conquer.
Said by
Edmund Burke

Editor's note · Context

Burke metaphorically describes the challenges faced in the West Indies as not just military but as a struggle against death itself.

Share

More from Edmund Burke

Jan 1, 1790

The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons,--no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom.

gutenberg.org
Jan 1, 1790

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.

gutenberg.org
Jan 1, 1790

So far is it from being true that we acquired a right by the Revolution to elect our kings, that, if we had possessed it before, the English nation did at that time most solemnly renounce and abdicate it, for themselves, and for all their…

gutenberg.org
Jan 1, 1790

If kings who did not owe their crown to the choice of their people had no title to make laws, what will become of the statute De tallagio non concedendo? of the Petition of Right? of the act of Habeas Corpus?

gutenberg.org

Other voices in this conversation