All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing Page 1 of 14

‘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.

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing Page 14 of 14

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.

http://tartarus.org/~martin/essays/burkequote.html 10/14/2008