For most of us, our default is to keep quiet and try not to make any waves. We can all tell stories of people who were lured into an addiction, a dangerous investment, a bad relationship, an abortion, or an infidelity.
We see the warning signs. We even mention it to our other friends. Somebody must boldly approach the candelabra, reposition it, before it turns into panic, craziness and fire extinguisher foam on the platform. As an added bonus to this cautionary tale, fire extinguisher foam on a hardwood platform is slippery.
Quite slippery. You can imagine the other embarrassing thing that happened to Pastor Gavin that fateful Christmas Eve. I am about to get kicked out of my church for this one. The governor is not taking phone calls and has vowed to put it into law over the senate. Bell found this important instance. The maxim appeared in a quotation from a speech by the Reverend Charles F. Aked who was calling for restrictions on the use of alcohol: 2. It has been said that for evil men to accomplish their purpose it is only necessary that good men should do nothing.
QI believes that the full name of Aked was Charles Frederic Aked, and he was a prominent preacher and lecturer who moved from England to America. The same expression was attributed to Aked in another periodical in Details for this cite are given further below. The earliest attribution of the modern saying to Edmund Burke was found by top researcher Barry Popik.
In July of a man named Sir R. Murray Hyslop delivered an address at a Congregational church conference that included the following: 3. The search for the origin of this famous quotation has led to controversy. Below are selected citations in chronological order and a brief discussion of this altercation. In the Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke wrote about the need for good men to associate to oppose the cabals of bad men.
The second sentence in the excerpt below is listed in multiple quotation references and shares some points of similarity to the saying under investigation, but it is clearly dissimilar: 4.
No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united Cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. In the British philosopher and political theorist John Stuart Mill delivered an inaugural address at the University of St. The second sentence in the excerpt below expresses part of the idea of the quotation under investigation: 5.
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject. The wording of the second half matched closely though no attribution was given: 6. He should not be lulled to repose by the delusion that he does no harm who takes no part in public affairs.
He should know that bad men need no better opportunity than when good men look on and do nothing. He should stand to his principles even if leaders go wrong. In a pithy form of the saying appeared in the Chicago Daily Tribune: 7. Aked in favor of prohibition as mentioned at the beginning of this article. Thus, the saying was probably in circulation before Here is a longer excerpt: 8. That is all that the criminal wants of the law—to be let alone. The sin of doing nothing is the deadliest of all the seven sins.
Note the second half of the adage is very close to the modern statement. The saying was again attributed to Rev. Aked and it occurred twice: once in the subhead of the article and once in the body.
While this is recognized as true of municipal politics, is it not also being evidenced as an actual condition in American industry? For bad men to accomplish their purposes it is only necessary that good men do nothing. On July 5, the temperance crusader Sir R. The address was published in , and it contained a version of the now famous statement which Hyslop attributed to Burke.
This is the earliest example of this attribution that QI knows about and it was found by Barry Popik who presented it on his website: Let it alone, that is all that is required. One of the most notable attributions of the quote to Burke was by President John F. Kennedy in a speech before Canadian lawmakers in Ottawa, on May 17, here. Bromwich pointed to this as the probable source of the misattribution in his intellectual biography of Burke.
Burke studied in Trinity College Dublin, and the university also suggests that a paraphrase is likely here.
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