Four Principles of Quotation Martin PorterMarch 2002
I find that I am not the first to present the manifold forms of Burke’sTriumph of Evil quote. Lee Frank had already given his own list,
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 Not sure of the exact quote, I looked it up. Here’s what I found: 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 endof his essay, where the variant forms he has found are collected.
Furthermore the quote had already been exposed as bogus in thealt.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 18thCentury British Statesman, famous for impeaching Warren Hastings, a bookon the French Revolution ("Reflections on the Revolution In France") andsome fairly liberal positions towards the American colonies. To myknowledge, no one has ever *found* the quote in any of his writings, andit remains more elusive than 1943 copper pennies. Your form is closeenough, given that the original has never been found; however, I’veusually seen it more in the form of "All that is necessary for theforces of evil to succeed/triumph is for enough good men to do nothing."Frank LynchA number of authors on the Web, like Lee Frank, associate the bogustriumph-of-evil quote with the quite genuine quote about good mencombining, as here,- IF GOOD MEN FAIL
by David Sisler
’
That quote from Edmund Burke in ‘Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents’ has, in general use, come to be delivered as, .’
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 missingsomething obvious to everyone else? Because to me the two quotes seemquite different, both in form and meaning. They only share two words ofany significance, ‘men’ and ‘good’, both of which are common ingeneral discourse and very common when the discourse is political. Thepossible 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 groupingsto counter similar formations by one’s adveraries, and has nothing atall to do with the circumstances under which evil is going to succeed.
Anyway, the complete answer to the origins of the triumph-of-evil quoteis not to be found on the Web, but in a very neat dictionary ofmisquotations I have discovered by Paul F Boller and John George calledThey never said it (Oxford University Press, 1989).- The much-quoted triumph-of-evil statement appeared in the 14th edition ofBartlett’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. WhenNew York Times columnist William Safire asked Emily Morrison Beck, editor of the 15th edition ofBartlett’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: 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’sNew York Times articles ‘Triumph of Evil’, of 9 March 1980, and‘Standing Corrected’, of 5 April 1981. SoBartlett’s is the culprit,and the invention as recent as the 60s of the last century. It wouldseem in fact that the yoking together of the triumph-of-evil quote withthe bad-men-combine quote goes back to Ms Beck. The two quotes oftenoccur side-by-side on internet quote lists, which is probably whypeople assume one must be a paraphrase of the other.
Boller and George’s little book is a fascinating read. Their prefacetraces the history of quotes in the USA as instruments of politicalrhetoric. First their use, then their misuse, and finally theirinvention. The purely mendacious activity of conscious quote-fakingthey 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 keeptaking you far more often than you would like to extreme rightist pagesfrom 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 agenuine quote of Burke’s, and monitor the extent of its misuse. By anodd coincidence it comes from same work of Burke quoted at the end ofthe first essay,the ‘Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents’. Let us look atit exactly in context. Here is Burke in full flood, employing his usualnever-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. .
A bit of background: eighteenth century politics in England wasdominated by the opposition of two groups, the Whigs and the Tories.What they believed need not concern us here, although it is worthemphasising that their ideas do not have a simple map into theleft/right divide of modern European politics. The Whigs were thedominant party, or at least they had been from about 1715 up to thetime when Burke was writing in 1770, but in the late 1760s the powerstructure established by the Whigs was beginning to crumble. Burke wasa Whig, and is calling on the Whigs to unite against a new Torypower-base that had grown up around George III under the Earl ofBute, which was extra-parliamentary, and therefore, to Burke,unconstitutional. Whig power was held together not by a modern partystructure, but by a system of patronage and influence that ran from topto bottom of society, and Burke is urging the Whigs to unite into aparty to combat the new Tory threat. The bad men are the Tories. Thegood men are the Whigs. The fall of the good men would be their fallfrom office. The struggle would be contemptible because, without partyunity, they would not stand a chance, and they would beunpitied because their adveraries would be merciless.
The bad-men-combine quote is therefore a call for politicians to uniteinto parties. Of course, modern politicians do this automatically, anddon’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 pageswhere 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 ofbanner, usually at the top or bottom of the page. In other words it isout of context, and we cannot tell what meaning the quoter thinks ithas.
- 6 pages contain the quote with sufficient context for it to be clearthat it has been understood correctly.
- 8 pages contain the quote with sufficient context for it to be clearthat 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 ismisunderstood are those of general interest, which suggests that unlessyou have read the original quote in Burke you are liable misunderstandit.
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, 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 nolonger about making effective parties, but making effective armies, andthe 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 fewdays later (20 February), he used the same device in a speech made inGranada, a country the USA had recently invaded,- Edmund Burke, a British parliamentarian who championed the cause of American independence, once wrote, Well, those words still ring true. That’s why we came to your aid.
The meaning is extended to include military invasion. The Presidentwent 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-evilquote, we may ask, how can we defend ourselves from the bogus quote? Itis clearly unreasonable for anyone to have to prove a quote bogus.This Burke quote, for example, is, I am certain, bogus,
--- Edmund Burke
But to prove it, you would need to read through the complete works ofBurke and note its absence. Even this would not be conclusive proof.Official ‘Complete Works’ are rarely complete. And it could always beargued that Burke said it, but never wrote it down, after which it washanded down in a little-known but trustworthy oral tradition, to emergeat the beginning of the 21st century on a couple of isolated web pagesin some remote corner of the internet. It should therefore be theresponsibility of the quoter to prove a quote genuine.
I therefore formulate and offer to the world the followingPrinciplesfor Quotations, two for quoters and two for readers, which, ifuniversally followed, would make an immense improvement to thereliability 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 assumethat it is probably bogus.
- Principle 2 (for readers)
- Whenever you see a quotation given with a full source assume that it isprobably being misused, unless you find good evidence that the quoterhas 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.
|