Skip to content
Shawords

Quote#War

If I understand at all the true Spirit of the present contest, We are…

Quote byEdmund Burke · 1729–1797

Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Letter to Sir Gilbert Elliot (22 September 1793), quoted in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VII: January 1792–August 1794 (1968), p. 432.

English (original)

If I understand at all the true Spirit of the present contest, We are engaged in a Civil War ... I consider the Royalists of France, or, as they are (perhaps more properly) called, the Aristocrates, as of the party which we have taken in this civil war.

— Edmund Burke

More from Edmund Burke