“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”

2002-01-01
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‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’ (or words to that effect) ∞

https://tartarus.org/martin/essays/burkequote.html

A study of a Web quotation
Martin Porter
January 2002

(The various URLs provided below won’t all work by the time you read this document, but a lot of them should. They were all last visited in early January, 2002.)

The Henrik Hudson School District Library Media Centre provides a model essay for students which ends with the words,

Perpetrators, collaborators, bystanders, victims: we can be clear about three of these categories. The bystander, however, is the fulcrum. If there are enough notable exceptions, then protest reaches a critical mass. We don’t usually think of history as being shaped by silence, but, as English philosopher Edmund Burke said, ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing.’ (this is a commonly known quote and does not need to be cited)

— http://www.lhric.org/henhud/library/RGModelPaper.html

It is interesting that the words ‘of evil’ were inadvertently omitted. I have filled them in in square brackets. The wording in bold italics is of course not part of the essay, but a directive to the students to avoid being unnecessarily pedantic: a quote this common does not need a citation, just as you don’t give a citation for Marx’s ‘workers of the world unite’, or Jesus’s ‘give us this day our daily bread’. It is sufficient to remind the reader that they issued from the pen, or the mouth, of Edmund Burke, who, whether we call him an English philosopher or an Irish politician, requires nothing more in the way of introduction.

And certainly it is a common quote. In fact it is possibly the commonest political quote you will find anywhere on the World Wide Web. It is used to warn of the encroachments of government, and to warn that governments do not do enough. It appeals to both left and right alike, and is equally useful in either camp. If you type the basic words of the quote into any of the leading search engines, you will find thousands upon thousands of web pages that contain Burke’s warning, either making some sort of statement (usually political), or as a quotable quote ready and waiting to be cut and pasted to help form yet another web page.

It is in fact one of the classic quotes. It would not be too great an exaggeration to say that for the Web community that have made use of it, it is the quote that keeps the memory of Burke alive, rather than Burke’s position as a writer that has led to him being quoted. It is always quoted with considerable reverence, and is made to stand as one of the unassailable truths about the need for freedom of action in democratic societies, a truth which crosses party divides and national loyalties.

Unfortunately, however, everybody quotes it slightly differently.

So in addition to,

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing

you also find,

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing

(Four example URLs are given here, although hundreds more could be given. Below I’ll limit it to one or two.)

And as well as these, you find,

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

and of course,

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing

Sometimes a comma is placed before the ‘is’, but we won’t worry about that. These variants are, I suppose, fairly harmless, in that they do not change the meaning, but many forms of the sentence contain before ‘good men’ a further qualifier to indicate an amount:

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for a few good men to do nothing

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for a few good men to do nothing

Now here of course we have a problem. Presumably our population of men contains good men, bad men, and in-between men, the bad men being the ones who work for the triumph of evil. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the good men amount to 10% of the population. Now if a few good men, say 2% of the population, do nothing, you still have 8% of the population made up of good men who are doing something. Will the efforts of the 8% fail because of the inertia of the 2%? If so, Burke’s sentence seems to be saying that all good men must be active in resisting a particular evil, and this, unless the activity were seen as a definition of goodness, is so unlikely to take place that one would expect the triumph of the evil to be guaranteed. After all, some of the good men may be ill in bed. Or it may mean that certain well-placed good men do nothing. But that would be a mere tautology, another way of saying that the evil will succeed unless certain good men in a position to prevent it from succeeding act to prevent it. All this of course presupposes that the sentence makes good sense without the additional ‘a few’, about which more below. Similar remarks apply to ‘some’ for ‘few’,

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for some good men to do nothing

Quite distinct therefore, is the use of ‘all’, which reinforces the idea of no good men doing anything.

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for all good men to do nothing

And yet the repetition of the two ‘all’s is slightly unhappy here. One feels the euphony has been sacrificed to meaning.

Sometimes we are given ‘enough’,

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for enough good men to do nothing

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that enough good men do nothing

– although this makes the sentence tautological again, since ‘enough’ must mean ‘enough for evil to triumph’. Despite the weakness of the sentence in this form, the presence of ‘enough’ is very common. Look out for more examples below.

The word ‘necessary’ is frequently replaced by something else. ‘essential’ is very popular,

All that is essential for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing

And so is ‘needed’.

All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

All that is needed for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing

All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing

All that is needed for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing

With the usual variations,

All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for enough good men to do nothing

This form is also surprisingly common:

All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for enough good men to do nothing

‘necessary’ sometimes becomes ‘required’,

All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing

All that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing

All that is required for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing

The three opening words, ‘all that is’, often become ‘the only thing’,

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing

(The two forms above are very common)

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing

  • www.cyberessays.com/History/129.htm [ 3 ]

  • www.freedomsite.org/cfirc/news/financial_post_aug24-99.html [ 4 ]

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing

The only thing required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing

The only thing needed for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing

The only thing needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

Or expanded to ‘the only thing that is’,

The only thing that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

The only thing that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing

But the most startling variant of the opening words is ‘All that it takes’, or even ‘All it takes’,

All that it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing

All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing

– for whoever wrote that, it cannot be Burke. A colloquial idiom of the 20th century, completely alien to the prose style of the 18th century in general and Burke’s style in particular, has been grafted onto the front of the sentence. Similar objections can be raised to the contraction of ‘that is’,

All that’s necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

All that’s needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for enough good men to do nothing

All that’s needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

Evil does not always triumph. Sometimes it succeeds,

All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing

Sometimes it prospers,

For evil to prosper all it needs is for good people to do nothing

Sometimes it ‘wins in the world’

All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing

All that’s necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing

Nor can we always expect to find ‘good men’. In the 18th century, ‘good men’ would have been in accord with the reality of the division of political power between the sexes, and quite stylistically acceptable to Burke’s (predominantly male) reading audience. Today it cries out for modification, or comment, as happens cheekily here,

All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men [sic] to do nothing

  • www.parliament.vic.gov.au/dcpc/Interim%20Report/Introductory%20of%20report.html [ 5 ]

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men (sic) do nothing

All that is required for evil to triumph is for good [wo]men to do nothing

The only thing needed for evil to triumph is for enough good men [and women] to do nothing

The only thing required for evil to triumph is for good men (and women!) to do nothing

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men (and women) do nothing

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men (and women) do nothing

For evil to triumph it is necessary only that good men [and women] do nothing

Or here, with no hint of any amendment,

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing

All that it takes for the triumph of evil is that good men and women do nothing

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men and women to do nothing

  • www.siena.edu/siena_news/Current%20Stories/Pres%20Comm%20Welcome%202001.htm [ 6 ]

Inevitably, we are given ‘people’,

All it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing

So far we have tried to be systematic in presenting the Protean forms of Burke’s famous quotation. But henceforth system may be abandoned. Suffice it to say that endless variants exist, and it would require the patience and skill of an expert palaeontologist to classify them all. Let us instead pick out a few gems:

All that needs to be done for evil to prevail is that good men do nothing

‘doing nothing’ is something which is done. Burke had the reputation among the Victorians of being one of the very greatest prose stylists in English Literature. One cannot think much of their judgement if this is his authentic voice.

The only thing that has to happen in this world for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing

All that is necessary for evil to triumph in the world is for enough good men and women to do nothing

These are the two longest forms I have as yet detected.

Evil thrives when good men do nothing

And this the shortest. Sense has been somewhat sacrificed in the interests of compression.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil in America is for good men to do nothing

The original context shows that this modification was not intended as a joke:

British statesman Edmund Burke said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil in America is for good men to do nothing.” America is one of the last strongholds of freedom on earth – and citizens who are dedicated to God are the only resources for the preservation of our freedoms, including our freedom to serve Him.

For evil to triumph good men need do nothing

Here it sounds as if the good men have saved themselves an unwanted chore.

For evil to triumph good men have to do nothing

And here, as if they are being warned not to interfere.

The best way for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing

The best among many options, presumably.

The surest way to assure the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

Burke plays with internal rhymes.

Evil will triumph so long as good men do nothing

A triumph which is continuous, presumably, and interrupted when the good men act.

It is necessary only for good men to say nothing for evil to triumph

Doing becomes saying.

It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph

Men becomes man.

For evil to triumph it is necessary for good men to do nothing

For evil to triumph it is sufficient for good men to do nothing

This pair need a little more comment because we come back to meaning again. They are converses of each other. The first means that if evil triumphs, good men will have done nothing, and the second that if good men do nothing, evil triumphs. But in the second it is possible for good men to do something while evil still triumphs, and in the first it is possible for good men to do nothing and for evil still to fail to triumph.

If you neglected your math and logic while at school and find this a bit confusing, the following may help,

Assuming you have a full range of kitchen implements, and are inspecting your limited larder, the following two statements are true:

  • To make pancake batter it is necessary to have flour.

  • To make pancake batter it is sufficient to have eggs, milk, flour, and sardines.

and the following two statements are false:

  • To make pancake batter it is sufficient to have flour.

  • To make pancake batter it is necessary to have eggs, milk, flour, and sardines.

And a few of the rest (for all cannot be presented here), which may be shown without comment,

All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing

All that is necessary for the forces of evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing

All that is required for evil to triumph over good is for good men to do nothing

Evil can triumph only if good men do nothing

The only thing evil men need to triumph is for good men to do nothing

The only thing for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for enough good men to do nothing

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men stand by and do nothing

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil was for good men to do nothing

The only way for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing

This survey is based on different forms of Burke’s quote found at over 1,000 different Web pages, which are a sample taken from the tens of thousands of pages on which, in my estimate, the sentence, in one of its many forms, can be found. The pages of the sample do have one thing in common, however. They all contain the name ‘Burke’. No matter how much the quote varies, it is always attributed to the self-same Edmund Burke, who was born in Dublin in 1728, and died at Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire on 8th July 1797.

Inevitably, if you have bothered to read this far, you must be wondering what the correct form of the quote is. And certainly it is a matter of some importance, because there is so much variation in the wording between the examples, as to throw the true meaning into considerable doubt. Quotes out of context are very easy to misunderstand even when the wording is precisely known. If we do not know the wording or the context we have no chance of being certain about the true meaning of a quoted phrase.

Here, however, there is a problem. Not one of the web pages I have looked at, despite the most diligent searching, give a reference that would enable you to trace it back to its source, and so discover its exact form. One page I found does include it as part of a longer quotation like this,

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts … the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

The quote was in precisely this form, with two sentences separated with three dots. Perhaps whoever wrote the page had seen the quotation in context, and trimmed it down to this shape. But when contacted, the author of the page said, ‘I’m sorry, but I no longer remember where on the Internet I found the source for that quote.’

As it happens, I have found about twenty other pages on the Web where the quote is given in this mysterious form. No doubt the authors of those pages would not be able to remember where they got it from either. Here are some of them,

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts … the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

How strange, to make a quotation that includes a mark of omission! Did not one of these quoters wonder what had been omitted? Or how much had been omitted? A few words? A few sentences? Paragraphs? Volumes?

But a clue is at hand at one more page, a French page, offering familiar quotations in English. It includes,

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Edmund Burke

Here they are given as quite separate quotes. From this page, or one similar to it, they have become joined by copying and pasting followed by a bit of editing. In this way the quote works its way around the Web, for ever being slightly mis-remembered, or slightly altered for reasons of personal prejudice, until it is changed almost out of recognition by a process of Chinese whispers. So what is the one true original of all the variants?

Perhaps by now you can guess the answer I am going to give.

There is no original. The quote is bogus, and Burke never said it. It is a pseudo-quote, and corresponds to real quotes in the same way that urban legends about the ghost hitch-hiker vanishing in the back of the car and alligators in the sewers correspond to true news stories.

This at least is my assertion, and I base it upon the following,

1) I cannot find a reference for the quote in my own Dictionary of Quotations, or in any of those consulted in my local city library, or at https://www.bartleby.com/100/ [ 10 ], or in any other online Dictionary of Quotations I have consulted.

2) If it were genuine, it would have one, or possibly two, noteworthy variants at most. For example, Milton’s line,

Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new

is frequently misquoted as

Tomorrow to fresh fields and pastures new

But the line does not, could not, exist in hundreds of different forms. Furthermore, after a little thought, you can usually see a plausible reason for a misquotation. In Milton’s line he was echoing older poets where woods were a part of pastoral life, but they are rare enough now for ‘fields and pastures’ to seem like a more natural description of the English countryside. There is nothing in the pseudo-Burke quote that can explain the endless variation of forms.

3) If it were genuine, it would be easily traceable. For any quote this common, reference to an encyclopaedia, dictionary of quotations, or the internet will usually reveal the source quickly. Furthermore great quotes (and this is supposed to be one), come usually from great works, which are again readily accessible, and are often on the internet in machine readable form as E-texts. The few Burke E-texts I have downloaded do not contain the quote. Even if this quote were from a minor work (the corner of one of Burke’s laundry lists for example), its fame would make the containing work famous and we would be able to find it. The fact that none of the thousands of web pages that give the quote cite a source is, for me, conclusive evidence that it is an invention.

But if anyone can trace this quote back to the authentic writings of Edmund Burke, email your findings to martin at tartarus.org, and I will remove this web page forthwith.

The only question left to answer is where it actually came from. The title at the top of this web page is the form which, to me, sounds most like Burke,

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing

It has about it the eighteenth century sound, it mentions ‘good’ and ‘evil’, which are certainly part of Burke’s political vocabulary, and it is a generalisation, like most of the other quotes by Burke that you see. The one thing you can say about the pseudo-quote is that it does remind you a bit of a real Burke quote, and that, I think, is the clue to where it comes from. Someone has read through a list of them and composed another one in a similar style. But although it is not unlike Burke, it does not feel quite genuine. Burke will use the words ‘good’ and ‘evil’, but he never reduces politics to the primitive level of describing his side as the good people and his opponents as the forces of evil they have to combat. In the pseudo-quote you do get the feeling of Buzz Lightyear, and the other good men of Star Command, fighting the evil Emperor Zurg, sworn enemy of the Galactic Alliance. And despite appearing to be precise, the exact meaning is not altogether clear. Are the men good in an absolute sense, or are they being described as good because they see the evil? Can they be described as good if they do nothing? Are not other things necessary for evil to triumph? Some degree of public enthusiasm for the evil, for example?

Triumphant evil has often been cast down by plain in-between men, and indeed by bad men. The human sacrifice practised among the Incas we may regard as evil, but the Conquistadors who brought it to an end we may equally regard as having been bad men. An attempt by a small and evil group to revive human sacrifice in modern society would fail, not through resistance by good men, but by a complete lack of support for such a crazy idea. But once you qualify the pseudo-quote to except these cases, its meaning is reduced to a mere truism, that if bad things are happening, we must do something about it.

The pseudo-quote is therefore without authenticity or meaning, and is just another of those political slogans which are used not as an assistance to, but as a substitute for real thought. It is not a deep truth, although it is constantly treated as one. Burke incidentally hated such things. He thought that cheap political slogans, or ‘maxims’ as he called them, enabled politicians to invoke principles of expediency, so they could pursue their own selfish interests instead of fulfilling their obligations to country, party and people. To him they were quite distinct from the deeps truths, or as he calls them here, ‘first principles’,

It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals that their maxims have a plausible air; and, on a cursory view, appear equal to first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as copper coin; and about as valuable. They serve equally the first capacities and the lowest; and they are, at least, as useful to the worst men as to the best. Of this stamp is the cant of not man, but measures; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honourable engagement.

Edmund Burke

And to this quote we can give a proper attribution,

Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the cause of the present discontents, 1770. In The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, edited by Henry Froude, Oxford University Press, 1909, Volume 2, page 83, lines 7 to 16.

Four Principles of Quotation ∞

https://tartarus.org/martin/essays/burkequote2.html

Being a follow up to A study of a Web quotation
Martin Porter
March 2002

I find that I am not the first to present the manifold forms of Burke’s Triumph of Evil quote. Lee Frank had already given his own list,

  • The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
  • All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for enough good men to do nothing.
  • All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.
  • In order for ‘evil’ to prevail, all that need happen is for ‘good’ people to do nothing.
  • All that is needed for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.
  • The surest way for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.
  • All it will take for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing.
  • All that is necessary for the forces of evil to take root in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.
  • All that is needed for the forces of evil to succeed is for enough good men to remain silent.
  • All it takes for Evil to prevail in this world is for enough good men to do nothing.

  • The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

—

Earlier in the same Web page, Lee introduces the quote as follows,

Here is where you would expect that famous quote from Edmund Burke. Something like “All that’s necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.” Not sure of the exact quote, I looked it up. Here’s what I found: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.*” Not quite the same thing, but easy to understand the transformation, a good quote made better by its passing into common wisdom.

The asterisk at the end of the quote gives a hypertext link to the end of his essay, where the variant forms he has found are collected.

Furthermore the quote had already been exposed as bogus in the alt.quotations newsgroup. Here is Frank Lynch writing on 9 February 1999:

P Caldwell wrote:

I heard a quote on TV:

“For evil to triumph it is enough only that good men do nothing”.

Does anyone know who said it or where I can find out?? I love it.

The quote you seek is generally attributed to Edmund Burke, an 18th Century British Statesman, famous for impeaching Warren Hastings, a book on the French Revolution (“Reflections on the Revolution In France”) and some fairly liberal positions towards the American colonies. To my knowledge, no one has ever *found* the quote in any of his writings, and it remains more elusive than 1943 copper pennies. Your form is close enough, given that the original has never been found; however, I’ve usually seen it more in the form of “All that is necessary for the forces of evil to succeed/triumph is for enough good men to do nothing.”

Frank Lynch

A number of authors on the Web, like Lee Frank, associate the bogus triumph-of-evil quote with the quite genuine quote about good men combining, as here,

IF GOOD MEN FAIL

by David Sisler

‘When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

That quote from Edmund Burke in ‘Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents’ has, in general use, come to be delivered as, ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’

Which ever version you prefer, the message is the same: evil will, therefore good must.

– And this, I must confess, I find very puzzling. Am I missing something obvious to everyone else? Because to me the two quotes seem quite different, both in form and meaning. They only share two words of any significance, ‘men’ and ‘good’, both of which are common in general discourse and very common when the discourse is political. The possible meaning that might be attached to the triumph-of-evil quote, are fully (perhaps too fully) explored in the first essay. [ 11 ]

The bad-men-combine quote is about the need to form political groupings to counter similar formations by one’s adveraries, and has nothing at all to do with the circumstances under which evil is going to succeed.

Anyway, the complete answer to the origins of the triumph-of-evil quote is not to be found on the Web, but in a very neat dictionary of misquotations I have discovered by Paul F Boller and John George called They never said it (Oxford University Press, 1989). [ 12 ]

The much-quoted triumph-of-evil statement appeared in the 14th edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (1968), with a letter Burke wrote William Smith on January 9, 1795, given as the source. But the letter to Smith was dated January 29, 1795, and it said nothing about the triumph of evil. When New York Times columnist William Safire asked Emily Morrison Beck, editor of the 15th edition of Bartlett’s, about the source, she acknowledged she hadn’t located the statement in Burke’s writings ‘so far’, but suggested it might be a paraphrase of something Burke said in a speech he gave in Parlament ‘Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents‘, on April 23, 1770: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” Safire thought her suggestion was a ‘pretty long stretch,’ but she included it in her introduction to the new edition of Bartlett’s.

Boller and George give a number of references, among which are Safire’s New York Times articles ‘Triumph of Evil’, of 9 March 1980, and ‘Standing Corrected’, of 5 April 1981. So Bartlett’s is the culprit, and the invention as recent as the 60s of the last century. It would seem in fact that the yoking together of the triumph-of-evil quote with the bad-men-combine quote goes back to Ms Beck. The two quotes often occur side-by-side on internet quote lists, which is probably why people assume one must be a paraphrase of the other.

Boller and George’s little book is a fascinating read. Their preface traces the history of quotes in the USA as instruments of political rhetoric. First their use, then their misuse, and finally their invention. The purely mendacious activity of conscious quote-faking they associate with the political right,

Radicals have plenty of quotations from Karl Marx, anyway, and probably see no need to add to the Marxist treasure-house. [ 13 ] Extreme rightists in America have a real problem, in any case; they would like to cite the Founding Fathers, but rarely find what they want in Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson. Hence the quote-faking.

And certainly tracing the triumph-of-evil quote over the Web does keep taking you far more often than you would like to extreme rightist pages from the USA – John Birchers [ 14 ] , libertarians, gun nuts, pro-life extremists of the abortion debate, and so on. The heart of darkness of the world wide web. [ 15 ]

The bad-men-combine quote is interesting because here we can see a genuine quote of Burke’s, and monitor the extent of its misuse. By an odd coincidence it comes from same work of Burke quoted at the end of the first essay [ 16 ] , the ‘Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents’. Let us look at it exactly in context. Here is Burke in full flood, employing his usual never-use-one-word-when-three-will-do style:

Whilst men are linked together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose it with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed, without concert, order, or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel difficult, and resistance impracticable. Where men are not acquainted with each other’s principles, nor experienced in each other’s talents, nor at all practised in their mutual habitudes and dispositions by joint efforts in business; no personal confidence, no friendship, no common interest, subsisting among them; it is evidently impossible that they can act a public part with uniformity, perseverance, or efficacy. In a connection, the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the weight of the whole, has his value, and his use; out of it, the greatest talents are wholly unserviceable to the public. No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours, are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

A bit of background: eighteenth century politics in England was dominated by the opposition of two groups, the Whigs and the Tories. What they believed need not concern us here, although it is worth emphasising that their ideas do not have a simple map into the left/right divide of modern European politics. The Whigs were the dominant party, or at least they had been from about 1715 up to the time when Burke was writing in 1770, but in the late 1760s the power structure established by the Whigs was beginning to crumble. Burke was a Whig, and is calling on the Whigs to unite against a new Tory power-base that had grown up around George III under the Earl of Bute, which was extra-parliamentary, and therefore, to Burke, unconstitutional. Whig power was held together not by a modern party structure, but by a system of patronage and influence that ran from top to bottom of society, and Burke is urging the Whigs to unite into a party to combat the new Tory threat. The bad men are the Tories. The good men are the Whigs. The fall of the good men would be their fall from office. The struggle would be contemptible because, without party unity, they would not stand a chance, and they would be unpitied because their adveraries would be merciless.

The bad-men-combine quote is therefore a call for politicians to unite into parties. Of course, modern politicians do this automatically, and don’t require encouragement from Burke or from anyone else.

If we look at its use on the web, we find that, in a sample of 100 pages where it occurs:

  • 40 of the pages are made up entirely of lists of quotes.
  • 46 of the pages contain the quote, but it is presented as a kind of banner, usually at the top or bottom of the page. In other words it is out of context, and we cannot tell what meaning the quoter thinks it has.
  • 6 pages contain the quote with sufficient context for it to be clear that it has been understood correctly.

  • 8 pages contain the quote with sufficient context for it to be clear that it has been understood incorrectly.

Unfortunately the pages where it is understood tend be ‘specialist’ pages, often devoted to Burke studies. The pages where it is misunderstood are those of general interest, which suggests that unless you have read the original quote in Burke you are liable misunderstand it.

Here is a typical example of its misuse:

Today there are brave men and women fighting for their freedom and independence against great odds. In Afghanistan, in Angola, and in Nicaragua, lightly armed freedom fighters face Soviet tanks, artillery, and helicopter gunships. Edmund Burke, that great British statesman who championed the cause of American independence, once wrote, “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they may fall one by one …” Well, today, we cannot sit back and idly watch as the new imperialism grinds down courageous people fighting for their liberty. We must give those heroes what they need, not just to fight and die for freedom but to win for freedom.

What the heroes need to help them associate against the bad men is, in this context, armaments and military support. Burke’s quote is no longer about making effective parties, but making effective armies, and the falling one by one is not loss of office, but death in battle.

The quoter is President Reagan, in a speech of 6 February 1986. A few days later (20 February), he used the same device in a speech made in Granada, a country the USA had recently invaded,

Edmund Burke, a British parliamentarian who championed the cause of American independence, once wrote, “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one …” Well, those words still ring true. That’s why we came to your aid.

The meaning is extended to include military invasion. The President went on,

And that is why the United States must help those struggling for freedom in Nicaragua. In the cause of liberty, all free people are part of the same family. We should stand together as brothers and sisters. And if we do, the Nicaraguan people will be able to free themselves from Communist tyranny and win the liberty that you now enjoy in Grenada.

Can we learn anything from all this? Going back to the triumph-of-evil quote, we may ask, how can we defend ourselves from the bogus quote? It is clearly unreasonable for anyone to have to prove a quote bogus. This Burke quote, for example, is, I am certain, bogus,

The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis

— Edmund Burke

But to prove it, you would need to read through the complete works of Burke and note its absence. Even this would not be conclusive proof. Official ‘Complete Works’ are rarely complete. And it could always be argued that Burke said it, but never wrote it down, after which it was handed down in a little-known but trustworthy oral tradition, to emerge at the beginning of the 21st century on a couple of isolated web pages in some remote corner of the internet. It should therefore be the responsibility of the quoter to prove a quote genuine.

I therefore formulate and offer to the world the following Principles for Quotations, two for quoters and two for readers, which, if universally followed, would make an immense improvement to the reliability of the information available on the world wide web.

  1. Principle 1 (for readers)

    • Whenever you see a quotation given with an author but no source assume that it is probably bogus.

  2. Principle 2 (for readers)

    • Whenever you see a quotation given with a full source assume that it is probably being misused, unless you find good evidence that the quoter has read it in the source.

  3. Principle 3 (for quoters)

    • Whenever you make a quotation, give the exact source.

  4. Principle 4 (for quoters)

    • Only quote from works that you have read.

Footnotes


  1. I don’t think this was ever archived. [ ↩ ]
  2. not archived [ ↩ ]
  3. dead, not archived [ ↩ ]
  4. dead, not archived [ ↩ ]
  5. That particular quote was never archived. While that website still exists, I’d have to decide on a date to search for, then go through deep archives for an interim report at around that date. I’m not doing that. [ ↩ ]
  6. not archived [ ↩ ]
  7. Now https://sites.pitt.edu/~poole/ARCHIVE1.HTML[ ↩ ]
  8. Not archived with that quote, although it may exist in some other page within a more recent capture. [ ↩ ]
  9. originally http://www.infoplease.com/spot/irishquotes1.html
    then https://www.infoplease.com/those-quotable-irish [ ↩ ]
  10. That author’s list of quotes was originally at https://web.archive.org/web/20000920071144/http://bartleby.com/100/276.html
    then it became https://bartleby.com/lit-hub/familiar-quotations/page-407[ ↩ ]
  11. Included above. [ ↩ ]
  12. ISBN-10: 0195064690
    ISBN-13: 978-0195064698 [ ↩ ]
  13. Since Wikipedia has been taken over by radical leftists, there is no article on them. [ ↩ ]
  14. Perhaps this is John Birch (missionary) [ ↩ ]
  15. Not to be confused with the dark web. [ ↩ ]
  16. Included above [ ↩ ]
  17. It became http://www0.geometry.net/authors/burke_edmund.html where that link directs to encyclopedia.farlex.com/Edmund Burke which is broken and not archived. Examining farlex.com leads me to thefreelibrary.com and https://www.thefreelibrary.com/_/search/Search.aspx?SearchBy=0&q=edmund+burke&Search=Search&By=0[ ↩ ]
4 comments

4 comments on ““All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing””

  2. Some broken links have been found and turned into Wayback Machine references. Additional research for replacement/updated links would need to be made. For example, I saw a Linux user group mailing list reference whose archive probably persists at another URL. Who knows if I’ll ever bother with that level of effort.

    More broken link checking will be done later.

    Reply

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