The line belongs to Falkland, not Burke. It appears in A Speech Concerning Episcopacy, delivered in the House of Commons in 1641 and first printed in the 1660 second edition of his Discourse of Infallibility — where the sentence reads “when it is not necessary to change,” not “if.” Falkland died in 1643; Burke was not born until 1729. Wikiquote files the Burke version under “Misattributed.”
“When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change” Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland, "A Speech Concerning Episcopacy" (House of Commons, 1641), printed in A Discourse of Infallibility, 2nd ed. (London, 1660). Not Edmund Burke. The version that circulates online opens with "If" — the 1660 printing reads "When." Via Quotle.info
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Edmund Burke. Use the credit shown above instead.
Can you use it?
✓ Free to use, including in commercial and paid presentations — no permission or licence needed.
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the world of Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland — English writer, MP and Royalist Secretary of State. Theme: "If it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "If it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
Where the sentence actually appears
Work
A Speech Concerning Episcopacy
Delivered
House of Commons, 1641
First printed in
A Discourse of Infallibility, 2nd ed. (London: Printed for William Nealand, 1660) — the edition that added “two discourses of Episcopacy”
Printed wording
“when it is not necessary to change” — not “if”
And my first inconvenience of this change, is, the inconvenience of change it self, which is so great an inconvenience, when the Change is great and suddain, that in such cases, when it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.
1660 printing
Spelling, capitalisation and word-breaks as printed in the 1660 edition.
Wikiquote’s Edmund Burke page ↗ carries this exact wording in its Misattributed section and says it “was actually said by Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland in a speech in the House of Commons.” Quote Investigator has no article on the line.
The Internet Archive scan of the same 1660 volume ↗ corroborates it. Its OCR is rough microfilm output — the line comes out as “in ſuch caſes, when it is not neceſſs'y to change, it is neceſſa-ry or co change” — but the word the machine had no trouble with is the one at issue: “when.”
Wikipedia ↗ ties the argument to the 1641 debates on church government, quoting it in the variant form “where it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.”
✓Public domain
The speech was made in 1641 and first printed in the 1660 second edition of Falkland’s Discourse of Infallibility — nearly three centuries before the 1931 US copyright threshold — so both the text and this printing are in the public domain. The Oxford Text Archive transcription is released CC0 (no rights reserved).
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
How it ended up on Burke
This is one of the most-travelled orphan sentences in political quotation. It sounds like the founding axiom of conservatism, so it has been handed in turn to a string of famous politicians and wits — a Fabian socialist and a Democratic president among them — and, along the way, its first word has been quietly rewritten.
The same sentenceBenjamin Disraeli, William Gerard Hamilton, George Bernard Shaw and John F. Kennedy Also credited
The same Wikiquote note ↗ lists all four as further claimants alongside Burke, adding of Kennedy that he “at any rate quoted it.” Wikiquote’s Disraeli page ↗ carries the reciprocal note, pointing back to Falkland.
~
“If” vs “when” vs “where”The wording itself Drifted
The 1660 printed text ↗ reads “when it is not necessary to change.” Wikipedia gives it as “where” ↗. The Burke-branded internet version opens with “If” — a wording that matches no printed source we could find.
Why a 1641 church-government debate became conservatism’s motto
The sentence was not a general reflection on life. It was a procedural argument about bishops. In the parliamentary session of 1641 the Commons were weighing whether to tear out the episcopal structure of the Church of England “root and branch.” Falkland thought bishops had no divine warrant — but he also thought the proposed replacement was unknown, untested and irreversible, and he said so: to vote the old government away was to destroy something you might prefer to whatever came next, and “to restore it again would be a miracle in State, like that of the resurrection to Nature.”
Stripped of the bishops, the line reads as a general maxim about institutions, which is exactly how the twentieth century used it. The American essayist Albert Jay Nock built his 1936 Atlantic piece “A Little Conserva-tive” around what he called Falkland’s “ever-memorable formula,” quoting it as “Mr. Speaker, when it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change” — and adding, “Here we get on track of what conservatism is.” Once a sentence becomes shorthand for conservatism, the pull toward pinning it on conservatism’s founding philosopher is close to irresistible. That is how it arrived at Edmund Burke.
when it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change
The argument Falkland was actually making
Falkland was not defending bishops on principle. Wikipedia’s account of the 8 February 1641 debate records that he wanted clergy barred from meddling in secular affairs, spiritual courts restrained, and needless ceremonies dropped — and that he denied episcopacy existed jure divino. What he refused was abolition, on the grounds that the Presbyterian system likely to replace it would be no less tyrannical.
His case in the speech is structural rather than theological: the Commons had not yet agreed what would succeed episcopacy, so any member voting to destroy it was voting blind. “Every man, when he gives his Vote to the destruction of this, may be sure that he destroys not that, which he likes better than that which shall succeed it.” The famous maxim is the closing turn of that argument — the cost of change itself, when the change is “great and suddain.”
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
c. 1610 – 1643 · English writer, MP and Royalist Secretary of State
Falkland gathered a circle of scholars and divines around his house at Great Tew, where — under the influence of William Chillingworth — he came to approach religious questions “rather by reason than by tradition or authority.” Elected to the Commons in 1640, he denied that bishops existed by divine right yet opposed abolishing episcopacy, fearing a Presbyterian settlement would prove just as tyrannical — the argument that produced this sentence. He became Secretary of State to Charles I in 1642 and, increasingly despairing of the Civil War, was killed at the First Battle of Newbury on 20 September 1643, aged 32 or 33 — his birth year is recorded only as 1609 or 1610.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland. “A Speech Concerning Episcopacy” (House of Commons, 1641). In A Discourse of Infallibility, With Mr. Thomas White’s Answer to it, and a Reply to him, 2nd ed. London: Printed for William Nealand, 1660.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change’?” Last verified 3 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-it-is-not-necessary-to-change-it-is-necessary-not-to/