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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.