Conditions of Progress in Democratic Government (1909).
Context: No greater mistake can be made than to think that our institutions are fixed or may not be changed for the worse. … Increasing prosperity tends to breed indifference and to corrupt moral soundness. Glaring inequalities in condition create discontent and strain the democratic relation. The vicious are the willing, and the ignorant are unconscious instruments of political artifice. Selfishness and demagoguery take advantage of liberty. The selfish hand constantly seeks to control government, and every increase of governmental power, even to meet just needs, furnishes opportunity for abuse and stimulates the effort to bend it to improper uses... The peril of this Nation is not in any foreign foe! We, the people, are its power, its peril, and its hope!
Conditions of Progress in Democratic Government (1909).
“Worse than any heathen or pagan abroad are those in our midst who are false to our institutions.”
Speech https://books.google.com/books?id=HGM9AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA5172 (1870)
“It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.”
C'est pire qu'un crime, c'est une faute.
Reaction to the 1804 drumhead trial and execution of Louis Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Enghien, on orders of Napoleon. Actually said by either Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe, legislative deputy from Meurthe (according to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations) or Joseph Fouché, Napoleon's chief of police (according to John Bartlett, Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), http://www.bartleby.com/100/758.1.html).
Misattributed
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
Not found in Burke's writings. Appears to be a paraphrase of "It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little." sourced to Sydney Smith (1771 - 1845).
“Vietnam was worse than immoral — it was a mistake.”
Reported in Alistair Cooke, Letter from America: 1946-2004 (2004), page 378.
But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require protection from governmental power, and by there being more and more people who will be ashamed of applying this power.
"On Anarchy", in Pamphlets : Translated from the Russian (1900) as translated by Aylmer Maude, p. 22
“History is is filled with brilliant people who wanted to fix things and just made them worse.”
Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 39
“The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.”
“There is no greater mistake than to try to leap an abyss in two jumps.”
[Lloyd George, David, David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, New, 1, 1938, Odhams Press Limited, London, 445, XXIV: Disintegration of the Liberal Party]
War Memoirs
