“Tyrants seldom want pretexts.”

— Edmund Burke

Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)
A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Tyrants seldom want pretexts." by Edmund Burke?

Edmund Burke photo

Edmund Burke270

Anglo-Irish statesman 1729–1797

Related quotes

“Pretexts are not wanting when one wishes to use them.”

Carlo Goldoni (1707–1794) Italian playwright and librettist

Non mancano pretesti quando si vuole.
La Villeggiatura (1761), I, 12.

“There are always people who want a tyrant. Democracy requires work if it's going to work.”

David Cay Johnston (1948) Investigative journalist and author

The Tyrant Next Time (November 7, 2019)

“It is peculiar to “ressentiment criticism” that it does not seriously desire that its demands be fulfilled. It does not want to cure the evil. The evil is merely the pretext for the criticism.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), p. 51

“True stories seldom have endings.
I don't want a happy ending, I want more story.”

Frances Hardinge book Fly by Night

Source: Fly by Night

“Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it the least.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

29 January 1748
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“It's the age-old battle between mind and heart, which seldom want the same thing.”

Dan Brown book Inferno

Source: Inferno

“Do you want to know something about tyrants? When faced with death, they weep and they beg just like the rest of us.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Quintana of Charyn

“When I want to use a quotation, I can very seldom do it properly, as the difficulty arises where to look for it in order to work it up.”

Thomas Dewar, 1st Baron Dewar book A Ramble Round the Globe

A Ramble Round the Globe, Ch. I, pub. Chatto and Windus, London (1894)

“One wants to move through life with elegance and grace, blossoming infrequently but with exquisite taste, and perfect timing, like a rare bloom, a zebra orchid… One wants… But one so seldom gets what one wants, does one?”

Tony Kushner Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes

Source: Angels in America

“The labouring poor, to use a vulgar expression, seem always to live from hand to mouth. Their present wants employ their whole whole attention, and they seldom think of the future. Even when they have an opportunity of saving they seldom exercise it, but all that is beyond their present neccessities goes, generally speaking, to the ale house.”

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) British political economist

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter V, paragraph 13, lines 8-13

Related topics

Want