Charles gives me
some interesting history on the Edmund Burke quote,
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good
men do nothing:
“The Usenet newsgroup alt.quotations says in its FAQ:
‘[I]t has been suggested (in Bartlett's) that it might be a twentieth-century paraphrase of:
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(1770)’
“Which makes a certain amount of sense.
"William Safire wrote on this once in his On Language column in the NYT Magazine; he got this as a response:
'Dear Safire:
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
You can quote me on that.
Sincerely,
Edmund Burke’
"Certainly _an_ Edmund Burke, if not necessarily _the_ Edmund Burke. :-)"I love stuff like this. Additionally, Charles sends a report of an interesting bumper sticker sighting:
[O]n the way across town [Oklahoma City] today I spotted my first Condi '08 bumper sticker, with the following quotation across the bottom: 'We Have A Dream.'"
Check out your links... there seems to be a problem.
Posted by: meep | January 13, 2005 at 11:21 AM
Yeah, Typepad has the hiccups. It keeps deleting my HTML formating.
Posted by: baldilocks | January 13, 2005 at 11:30 AM
Fixed.
Posted by: baldilocks | January 13, 2005 at 11:33 AM
Dr. Rice or Dr. Gingrich for GOP nominee? Uhhh...I'll take a Condi over a Newt any day of the week and thrice on Sundays! A contest between Dr. Rice and St. Hillary would be quite delectable. Go Condi!
Posted by: Bachbone | January 13, 2005 at 02:37 PM
I've always thought that was a silly quote. Suppose good men and evil men did nothing? Then who triumphs? Or what if good men do something, but not the right thing?
Posted by: Xrlq | January 13, 2005 at 05:59 PM
XRLQ: Don't you have a (very cute) baby to burp or something? :-P
Posted by: baldilocks | January 13, 2005 at 06:28 PM
What's odd about the Burke business was that it came up while I was researching a more recent quote, the one that goes like this:
"If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain."
Churchill? Clemenceau? Disraeli? No one's pinned this one down, either.
Posted by: CGHill | January 13, 2005 at 07:59 PM
Charles, for some reason just now I thought that was Mencken, but I have no idea why I would think that.
Xrlq, I guess it depends on one's definition of "doing nothing." I would imagine that "going out for a beer" would qualify as "doing something," but I have a feeling that wouldn't be what the source had in mind...
Posted by: McGehee | January 14, 2005 at 07:35 AM
Residing as I do in Tulsa, I sure would like to know where I can get one of those bumper stickers!
By the way CGHill, that looks awfully close to a quote often attributed to Churchill.
Posted by: Montie | January 16, 2005 at 12:00 PM
Dr. Rice is pro-choice, pro-gay-rights, pro-affirm-action.
Would she make it through the GOP primaries?
Posted by: jab | January 17, 2005 at 03:44 PM