“The greatest of all mistakes is to do nothing because you think you can only do 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).

Faith, ii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XXI - Rebelliousness

Panel with Edward Said at Columbia University, New York, April 1999 http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/07/042214
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999
Context: Let me just put the whole thing in a kind of mundane level. Like, suppose you walk out in the street, this evening, and you see a crime being committed, you know, somebody is robbing someone else. Well, you have three choices. One choice is to try to stop it, maybe you call 911 or something. Another choice is to do nothing. A third choice is to pick up an assault rifle and kill 'em both, and kill a bystander at the same time. Well, suppose you do that, and somebody says, "Well, you know, why did you do that?" And you say, "Look, I couldn't stand by and do nothing." I mean, is that a response? If you can think of nothing that wouldn't do harm, then do nothing. And the same is true, magnified, in international affairs. Apart from the fact that there were things that could have been done.

#155
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Source: Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (2009), p. 35

Address to Polaroid employees at Symphony Hall in Boston, Massachusetts (5 February 1960), as quoted in Insisting on the Impossible : The Life of Edwin Land (1998) by Victor K. McElheny, p. 198
Context: The world is a scene changing so rapidly that it takes every bit of intuitive ability you have, every brain cell each one of you has, to make the sensible decision about what to do next. You cannot rely upon what you have been taught. All you have learned from history is old ways of making mistakes. There is nothing that history can tell you about what we must do tomorrow. Only what we must not do.

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

Source: The Little Shop of Happy Ever After

Source: The Snow Queen