Two wrongs don't make a right

Two wrongs don’t make a right

Welcome to English in a minute.

This expression sounds like instructions for how not to make something.

TWO WRONGS DON’T MAKE A RIGHT

Did you hear the news about Helen?

No, what happened?

She was fired for stealing from the company.

What?

Helen doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would do that.

Well, she said that her boss had been stealing from the company for years.

So she thought it was okay.

Well, two wrongs do not make a right.

In multiplication, two negative numbers make a positive.

But it does not work that way in life.

Doing something bad as an answer to another person doing something bad, usually just makes things worse.

When that happens, you can say,“Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

And that’s English in a minute.