There are occasions, I admit, of public necessity, so vast, so clear, so evident, that they supersede all laws.
Edmund Burke: “There are occasions, I admit, of public necessity, so vast, so clear, so evident, that they supersede all laws.”
Editor's note · Context
Burke acknowledges that there are rare instances where public necessity can override laws.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
An irregular, convulsive movement may be necessary to throw off an irregular, convulsive disease.
They threw a politic, well-wrought veil over every circumstance tending to weaken the rights which in the meliorated order of succession they meant to perpetuate, or which might furnish a precedent for any future departure from what they…
They have little regard to the obvious consequences of their doctrine, though they may see that it leaves positive authority in very few of the positive institutions of this country.
All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we have pursued, who have chosen our nature rather than our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for…





