QuoteProject
Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
Edmund Burke
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Poorly designed laws can lead to oppressive circumstances for individuals, making them feel bound by tyranny.

Edmund Burke's quote highlights the danger posed by unjust or poorly conceived laws that infringe on individual freedoms. Such laws not only fail to protect citizens but can instead become tools of oppression, creating a tyrannical atmosphere where individuals are subject to restrictions that undermine their liberties and well-being.

Themes

LawsTyrannyInjusticeFreedomOppression

In practice

Example use cases

During a debate on civil rights, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of just legislation.

More from Edmund Burke

A great empire and little minds go ill together.
Edmund BurkeRead
To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
Edmund BurkeRead
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
Edmund BurkeRead
The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis.
Edmund BurkeRead
Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.
Edmund BurkeRead
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Edmund BurkeRead

Similar quotes

Isn't it time that these most ancient sorrows of ours grew fruitful? Time that we tenderly loosed ourselves from the loved one, and, unsteadily, survived: the way the arrow, suddenly all vector, survives the string to be more than itself. For abiding is nowhere.
Rainer Maria RilkeRead
It is a time when one’s spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death. It is a time when one is filled with vague longings; when one dreams of flight to peaceful islands in the remote solitudes of the sea, or folds his hands and says, What is the use of struggling, and toiling and worrying any more? let us give it all up.
Mark TwainRead
Angels and demons were identical--interchangeable archetypes--all a matter of polarity. The guardian angel who conquered your enemy in battle was perceived by your enemy as a demon destroyer.
Dan BrownRead
All things are subject to decay and when fate summons, monarchs must obey.
John DrydenRead
Nearly all our originality comes from the stamp that time impresses upon our sensibility.
Charles BaudelaireRead
That the speech of self-disclosure should be translatable seems to me very odd, but I am convinced that it is. The conclusion that I draw is that the only quality which all human being without exception possess is uniqueness: any characteristic, on the other hand, which one individual can be recognized as having in common with another, like red hair or the English language, implies the existence of other individual qualities which this classification excludes.
W. H. AudenRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.