ProverbMoralityEnglish origin1734

Two wrongs don't make a right

Meaning: Responding to wrongdoing with more wrongdoing is never justified.

Origin: The thought appeared in 18th-century print in several forms. A 1734 poem in The London Magazine plays on the idea, and in 1783 Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote that "three wrongs will not make one right." The "two wrongs" wording settled later.

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