A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). copy citation

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Author Edmund Burke
Source Reflections on the Revolution in France
Topic conservation change
Date 1790
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15679/15679-h/15679-h.htm#REFLECTIONS

Context

“the change is to be confined to the peccant part only,—to the part which produced the necessary deviation; and even then it is to be effected without a decomposition of the whole civil and political mass, for the purpose of originating a new civil order out of the first elements of society. A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. Without such means it might even risk the loss of that part of the Constitution which it wished the most religiously to preserve. The two principles of conservation and correction operated strongly at the two critical periods of the Restoration and Revolution, when England found itself without a king.” source