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

Four Principles of Quotation

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.: http://www.leefrank.com/9112001/into_war.html

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.: http://davidsisler.com/2-17-96.htm

- 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.

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).

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 Parliament, ‘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. 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, libertarians, gun nuts, pro-life extremists of the abortion debate, and so on. The heart of darkness of the world wide web.

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, 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.: http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/resource/speeches/1986/20686e.htm

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.: http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/resource/speeches/1986/22086a.htm

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: http://www.apfn.org/apfn/thankyou.htm; http://www.chesco.com/~artman/_disc9/00000013.htm; http://www.j4.com/authors/burke_edmund.php

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.

Principle 1 (for readers): Whenever you see a quotation given with an author but no source assume that it is probably bogus.
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.
Principle 3 (for quoters): Whenever you make a quotation, give the exact source.
Principle 4 (for quoters): Only quote from works that you have read.