The following is the most widely-disseminated erroneous quote on the WWW.

"The statement that "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" is often attributed to Burke. Burke never said this"

It was in editions of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. When the editor was challenged about the accuracy, she said they were satill looking for it. However


'in 1770, he wrote in Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents that "when bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." '

In the next post, I'll give a link to an interesting site which looks at a huge number of variants of the quote.