John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.
4394 Edmund Burke 1729-1797 John Bartlett
| NUMBER: | 4394 |
| AUTHOR: | Edmund Burke (1729–1797) |
| QUOTATION: | “War,” says Machiavel, “ought to be the only study of a prince;” and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. “He ought,” says this great political doctor, “to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans.” A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | A Vindication of Natural Society. Vol. i. p. 15. |