Enlightenment

Edmund Burke

1729–1797

Parliamentarian and writer

The line about good men doing nothing is not his. The paragraph he did publish is about association: when bad men combine, the good fall one by one unless they combine too. He meant a political tactic.

In the canon

  1. 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

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