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

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

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: http://www.hope-christian-fellowship.cityslide.com/pages/page.cfm/921086; http://www.keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?ID=961; http://alohi.ucdavis.edu/~len/Fray/Bon_Mots/Archive/99_01.html; http://clkoberg.com/9-11-01/perspectives.html

you also find,

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing: http://cedarproductions.com/azcc/Visitor.htm; http://www.christianmedianews.org/index/editorials/kevin.htm; http://www.cmf.org.uk/pubs/nucleus/nucjul98/editor.htm; http://www.constitution.org/cons/quotes01.htm

(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: http://www.animalliberationfront.com/ALFront/ARActiv.htm; http://www.freedompc.com/

and of course,

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing: http://runtell.topcities.com/quotes.html; http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Prairie/7463/HELPTHEM.html

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: http://www.freewebz.com/jeffhead/liberty/Y2KLesson.htm
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for a few good men to do nothing: http://www.elagda.com/body_index.php3

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: http://www.elagda.com/About_eLagda/The_Beginning/body_the_beginning.php3

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: http://www.cam.net.uk/home/Nimmann/spirit/PRAYERS.HTM; http://www.injuredworker.org/IWA.htm

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: http://members.aol.com/egyptart/; http://www.hts.on.ca/senior/desburke/sundry.htm
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that enough good men do nothing: http://www.activism.net/pipermail/think/2001-October/000014.html; http://www.fen.net/quotes/politics.shtml

- 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: http://www.bayou.com/~lou2247/recy03.html; http://www.suretybondsusa.com/news2.htm

And so is ‘needed’.

All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing: http://www.treatmentchoice.com/homebase.html; http://www2.nio.gov.uk/080497.htm
All that is needed for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing: http://www.pfonline.com/columns/1101pers.html; http://www.utrikes.regeringen.se/inenglish/pressinfo/other_speeches/970306.htm
All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing: http://www.bfree.on.ca/comdir/churches/hoperc/quotes.htm; http://www.perpetualwealth.com/FWC/pmpbook_saying.htm
All that is needed for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing: http://www.mac.drake.edu/org/times_d/01_02/sept/9_21/Letters.html; http://www.raoul-wallenberg.org.ar/english/premiowallpastrana.htm

With the usual variations,

All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for enough good men to do nothing: http://pub8.ezboard.com/fthelotrmoviesitegenerictolkien.showMessage?topicID=69.topic

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: http://greensolitaire.bizland.com/enviro-1.htm; http://www.greenmatters.com/gm/shared/quotes.html

‘necessary’ sometimes becomes ‘required’,

All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing: http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdeboard/bdcolumbine.htm; http://www.uscharterschools.org/cs/codeg/view/cs_bmsg/387
All that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing: http://home.echo-on.net/~buzzcorr/QUOTES%20OF%20THE%20STREET.htm; http://palaceofreason.com/Essays/Politics/bases_for_argument.html
All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing: http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/Sanford/JOEL.HTM; http://www.nrlc.org/news/2001/NRL05/holly.html
All that is required for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing: http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/ipns/ipns-20000229-01.txt; http://www.actionamerica.org/fun/ffquotes.html

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: http://home.onestop.net/nomad/improving.html; http://www.charlestondemocrats.org/getinvolved.htm
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing: http://www.iahushua.com/BeWise/rights.html; http://www.wealth4freedom.com/truth/chapter13.htm

(The two forms above are very common)

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing: http://www.cyberessays.com/History/129.htm; http://www.freedomsite.org/cfirc/news/financial_post_aug24-99.html
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing: http://justours.com/usrights/usrights.htm
The only thing required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing: http://www.nebulae.net/calypso/quotes.htm
The only thing needed for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing: http://www.theonehope.org/readliterature.asp?ID=45
The only thing needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing: http://www.canongate.net/canons/cnp.taf?_n=2; http://www.canongateprize.com/2000/seven.htm

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: http://www.healthyteens.com/aids_aware.html; http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/2000/s000630a.htm
The only thing that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing: http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2000/06/F.RU.000630130142.html

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: http://www.jpfo.org/alert20001214.htm
All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing: http://www.chiefrabbi.org/resources/Message.html; http://www.users.mis.net/~dcgay/foundation.htm

- 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: http://adaptationsurvival.com/excerpt.htm; http://www.adaptationsurvival.com/survivalextinction.html
All that’s needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for enough good men to do nothing: http://www.leefrank.com/9112001/into_war.html
All that’s needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing: http://www.totallifenow.org/Archive/0901/Heartmindprt.htm

Evil does not always triumph. Sometimes it succeeds,

All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing: http://www.angelfire.com/md2/Ldotvets/Quotes.html

Sometimes it prospers,

For evil to prosper all it needs is for good people to do nothing: http://www.peace.ca/aftriumphtorture.htm

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: http://www.graficaedesign.com/docs/citaz2.txt
All that’s necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing: http://www.thinkexist.com/English/Author/x/Author_1347_1.htm

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: http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/dcpc/Interim%20Report/Introductory%20of%20report.html
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men (sic) do nothing: http://www.artvt.com/painters/radbooth.html
All that is required for evil to triumph is for good [wo]men to do nothing: http://www.togg.org.uk/direct.html
The only thing needed for evil to triumph is for enough good men [and women] to do nothing: http://www.visionarylead.org/paradigm.htm
The only thing required for evil to triumph is for good men (and women!) to do nothing: http://teddycare.coastside.net/About_Our_Community.html
All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men (and women) do nothing: http://www.americansovereign.com/eoa.htm
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men (and women) do nothing: http://www.jackal.inta.net.au/w01-8.html; http://www.sheepdrove.com/frontpage.htm
For evil to triumph it is necessary only that good men [and women] do nothing: http://chronicle.merit.edu/colloquy/2001/despise/50.htm

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: http://www.realwomenca.com/html/newsletter/1997_Nov_Dec/Article_4.html
All that it takes for the triumph of evil is that good men and women do nothing: http://members.shaw.ca/idslayer/2cavemen.html; http://www.ourcourtssuck.com/
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men and women to do nothing: http://www.siena.edu/siena_news/Current%20Stories/Pres%20Comm%20Welcome%202001.htm

Inevitably, we are given ‘people’,

All it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing: http://www.christiansinpolitics.org.uk/_wsn/page2.html
All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing: http://homepage.mac.com/justified_type/quotes.html; http://www.carolinamessenger.org/109908.htm
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing: http://www.pitt.edu/~poole/ARCHIVE1.HTML

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: http://www.advocateweb.org/hope/quotes.asp

‘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: http://www.owmg.org/Education/STB/STB-1981/STB-NO81.txt
All that is necessary for evil to triumph in the world is for enough good men and women to do nothing: http://www.hillnews.com/091901/eisele.shtm

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

Evil thrives when good men do nothing: http://users.owt.com/russt/index5.htm

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: http://www.campuscrusade.com/Articles/5dutiesarticle.htm

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: http://ic.net/~celano/

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

For evil to triumph good men have to do nothing: http://forums.uktalking.co.uk/cgi-bin/ikonboard/topic.cgi?forum=8&topic=88; http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/e/q100170.html

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: http://209.94.197.2/aug99/aug25/opinion.htm

The best among many options, presumably.

The surest way to assure the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing: http://www.tbscc.com/users/jherman/

Burke plays with internal rhymes.

Evil will triumph so long as good men do nothing: http://www.blockbuster.com/bb/movie/details/0,6861,VID-V+++109440,00.html

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: http://www.skeptics.com.au/features/news/ip-post02.htm

Doing becomes saying.

It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph: http://www.tt92.demon.co.uk/2000_021.htm

Men becomes man.

For evil to triumph it is necessary for good men to do nothing: http://www.justiceinfamilylaw.co.uk/
For evil to triumph it is sufficient for good men to do nothing: http://www.gn.apc.org/wansteadquakers/news9905.htm

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: http://www.salempdva.com/CAPT.HTM
All that is necessary for the forces of evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing: http://wa.crimestoppers.com.au/about/?task=chair_comments
All that is required for evil to triumph over good is for good men to do nothing: http://www.theuminas.com/favorite.htm
Evil can triumph only if good men do nothing: http://www.islam-online.net/English/contemporary/qpolitic-15/qpolitic3.shtml
The only thing evil men need to triumph is for good men to do nothing: http://capo.org/opeds/pp0618.htm
The only thing for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing: http://www.ilovejesus.com/school/keepbouquets/index15.shtml; http://www.infoplease.com/spot/irishquotes1.html
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for enough good men to do nothing: http://www.perm.org/articles/a073.html
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men stand by and do nothing: http://www.ix625.com/echotest.html; http://www.ix625.com/un_numb/03give.html
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil was for good men to do nothing: http://intergate.goshenschools.org/~swilfong/quotes.htm
The only way for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing: http://www.ij.org/publications/liberty/1997/l_6_97_c.html; http://www.mit.edu/~darido/phrases.html

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.: http://www.wizardsofaz.com/waco/quotes.html; http://www.geocities.com/patriotsweb/othergreatquotes.htm; http://www.wealth4freedom.com/truth/chapter13.htm; http://www.taxtruth4u.com/caesar.html; http://unquietmind.com/snitch.html; http://kmss.com/quotes.html; http://taiwan.wufi.org/mail/m070898.htm; http://www.darkhorse2000.com/html/facts-quotes.html; http://earthops.net/klaatu/sovereign/freedom-speech1.txt; http://vancouver-webpages.com/vanlug/2001-1/0427.html; http://www.cnw.com/~loop/page138.html

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: http://accot.free.fr/Hobbies/Literature/Quotes.html

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 http://www.bartleby.com/100/, 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@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.

And see the follow-on essay.