"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
"To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind."
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Source: 'Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents' (1770) p. 4
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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."