"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
"Reflect how you are to govern a people who think they ought to be free, and think they are not. Your scheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but discontent, disorder, disobedience; and such is the state of America, that after wading through up to your eyes in blood, you could only end up where you begun; that is, to tax where no revenue is to be found... all is confusion beyond it."
3 likes
Source: Edmund Burke (1919). “Speech on Conciliation with America”
About the author
Same author
More quotes by Edmund Burke
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."
"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it."
"The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis."
"Silence is golden but when it threatens your freedom it's yellow."
"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."