"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
"But a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition, to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution."
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Source: Edmund Burke (1852). “The Works and Correspondance of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke”, p.280
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"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."
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"The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis."
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"Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray, to not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little, shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour."