"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
"The science of constructing a commonwealth or renovating it, or reforming it, is...not to be taught a priori...That which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation, and its excellence may rise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions."
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Source: 1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France.
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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."