Lifted from Skeetermonkey

[pecunium]

Who got it from somewhere else.

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

Comments

[skeetermonkey.livejournal.com]

I found it here, on a website devoted to how this was misquoted and through many twists and turns became sometehing the effect of "All it will take for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing."

Mr. Porter's point seems to be that the Edmund Burke's quote is used out of context from its intended use (in parliament, that the political parties should band together or else risk falling person by person), rather than the many different versions which seem to ascribe to the quote more significance than it originally had.

That aside, I think it's still marvelous, and, even out of context, it is an exhortion to band together and combat evil.