Answer:
It is interesting that the words ‘of evil’ were inadvertently omitted. I have filled them in in square brackets. The wording in bold italics is of course not part of the essay, but a directive to the students to avoid being unnecessarily pedantic: a quote this common does not need a citation, just as you don’t give a citation for Marx’s ‘workers of the world unite’, or Jesus’s ‘give us this day our daily bread’. It is sufficient to remind the reader that they issued from the pen, or the mouth, of Edmund Burke, who, whether we call him an English philosopher or an Irish politician, requires nothing more in the way of introduction.
And certainly it is a common quote. In fact it is possibly the commonest political quote you will find anywhere on the World Wide Web. It is used to warn of the encroachments of government, and to warn that governments do not do enough. It appeals to both left and right alike, and is equally useful in either camp. If you type the basic words of the quote into any of the leading search engines, you will find thousands upon thousands of web pages that contain Burke’s warning, either making some sort of statement (usually political), or as a quotable quote ready and waiting to be cut and pasted to help form yet another web page.
It is in fact one of the classic quotes. It would not be too great an exaggeration to say that for the Web community that have made use of it, it is the quote that keeps the memory of Burke alive, rather than Burke’s position as a writer that has led to him being quoted. It is always quoted with considerable reverence, and is made to stand as one of the unassailable truths about the need for freedom of action in democratic societies, a truth which crosses party divides and national loyalties.
Unfortunately, however, everybody quotes it slightly differently.
Explanation:
