Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
560
AUTHOR:
Edmund Burke (1729–97)
QUOTATION:
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
ATTRIBUTION:
Attributed to EDMUND BURKE, but never found in his works. It may be a paraphrase of Burke’s view that “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle” (Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, April 23, 1770).—Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 15th ed., p. ix (1980).
