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About this quote

What does it mean?
Public officials must stay alert; sleeping on duty or siding with enemies are both failures.
In plain terms
In public life, sleeping on duty or joining the enemy is a failure.
What can you take from it?
Public servants must remain vigilant and loyal.

Where it applies

  • government service
  • corporate leadership
  • public office

Putting it to work

  • duty schedules
  • performance reviews
  • code of conduct

Questions to consider

  • What defines public duty?
  • How do leaders stay alert?

Another view

Rest is also necessary to avoid burnout and poor decisions.

More from Edmund Burke

  1. So to be patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen.

    Permalink to quote #55
  2. Reflect how you are to govern a people who think they ought to be free, and think they are not. Your scheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but discontent…

    Permalink to quote #57
  3. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

    Permalink to quote #54

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