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Who really said it

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

Not Edmund Burke — no such sentence exists in his works No verified author Credited to Edmund Burke (1729–1797) · earliest known Burke credit, July 1920
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

No one has ever located this sentence in Burke. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations printed it under his name in 1968 and cited a specific document — his letter to William Smith of 9 January 1795 — but that letter contains nothing of the kind, and Bartlett’s fifteenth edition in 1980 acknowledged the line had not been located in his writings. Quote Investigator ↗ traces the earliest credit to Burke only as far back as a July 1920 church address, and concludes the record is too incomplete to say who actually crafted the wording.

Last verified 3 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” There is no evidence Edmund Burke wrote "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" — the line has never been located in his works, and Bartlett's Familiar Quotations withdrew its 1795 letter citation in 1980. The closest documented source is John Stuart Mill's inaugural address at the University of St Andrews, 1 February 1867, page 36: 'Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.' — via Quotle.info

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Edmund Burke. Use the credit shown above instead.

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We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

Evoking the themes of justice, courage and character. Theme: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing". 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.

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Provenance

The closest documented source

Work
Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St. Andrews, Feb. 1st 1867
Author
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), Lord Rector of the University of St Andrews
Delivered
1 February 1867 · printed London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1867, p. 36
Relation to the quote
Antecedent only — the famous wording appears in no located source, by Mill or anyone else

Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. Not the famous wording

This is Mill in 1867, not the sentence people quote. It is the nearest documented expression of the thought that anyone has produced from a primary source — but it is not the popular wording, and Mill did not write that wording either.

Scanned page from the 1867 first edition
Read page 36 of Mill's address on Wikisource
Mill's St Andrews inaugural address, page 36 (Wikisource scan)

How a sentence nobody wrote became Burke’s

  • 1770 — the real Burke sentence, and it is not this one. Wikiquote’s sourced entry ↗ records, from Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770): “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” Wikiquote notes this passage is often cited as the likely origin of the more famous line. It is related in spirit and nowhere near it in wording — and its subject is forming a political party, not standing idly by.
  • 1867 — Mill states the idea plainly. On page 36 of his St Andrews inaugural address ↗, delivered 1 February 1867: “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” Closer than Burke, still not the sentence on the poster.
  • 1916–1920 — the modern shape appears, then acquires a famous name. Quote Investigator ↗ finds the Rev. Charles F. Aked in the San Jose Mercury Herald of 31 October 1916: “For evil men to accomplish their purpose it is only necessary that good men should do nothing” — prefaced with “It has been said,” not claimed as his own. On 5 July 1920, at the Fourth International Congregational Council in Boston, Sir R. Murray Hyslop told his audience: “Burke once said: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing.’” That is the earliest credit to Burke that QI has located.
  • 1961–1980 — a president repeats it, a reference book retracts it. Quote Investigator ↗ documents President John F. Kennedy quoting the modern wording to the Canadian Parliament on 17 May 1961 and crediting Burke; Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations made it official in its 1968 fourteenth edition, citing Burke’s letter to William Smith of 9 January 1795. William Safire challenged the attribution in The New York Times in 1980 after it was confirmed the letter contained no such quote, and Bartlett’s fifteenth edition conceded the quotation had not been located in Burke’s writings.

No copyright status can honestly be asserted for the famous sentence, because it has no traceable first publication and no identified author. The two documented texts quoted on this page are both long out of copyright — Burke’s Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (first published 23 April 1770) and Mill’s St Andrews inaugural address (1867) — but neither of them contains the wording people actually quote.

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

Three names, none of them right

This may be the most-quoted sentence in English political speech and one of the least sourced. It has been hung on at least three names over the past century, and the evidence supports none of them as its author.

Edmund Burke No source in his works

The attribution has no documentary basis. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations gave it the appearance of one in 1968 by citing Burke’s letter to William Smith of 9 January 1795 — but the letter contains no such sentence, and after William Safire challenged the citation in The New York Times in 1980, Bartlett’s fifteenth edition acknowledged the quotation had not been located in Burke’s writings, per Quote Investigator ↗. Barry Popik reaches the same verdict independently: never traced in his writings ↗.

John Stuart Mill Antecedent, not author

Mill genuinely wrote something very like it — “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing” — on page 36 of his 1867 St Andrews address ↗, and Wikiquote calls the famous line probably a paraphrase of it ↗. But Quote Investigator ↗ is careful to say Mill’s expression is conceptually related and not close textually. Putting the popular wording in Mill’s mouth simply relocates the error.

Alexis de Tocqueville No basis offered

Wikiquote records the saying being attributed to Tocqueville as well ↗, filed under “Unsourced, unverified, or other best guesses.” No source in Tocqueville is ever supplied with it — it is the same reflex that produced the Burke credit, applied to a second famous name.

The honest answer is that nobody knows who wrote it. Quote Investigator ↗ raises the possibility that the Rev. Charles F. Aked coined an early version in 1916 and that Sir R. Murray Hyslop pinned it on Burke in 1920 because it sounded like him — but concludes plainly that “the record is too incomplete to make strong claims about who crafted the quote.”

Context

How a sentence with no author got a founding father

The line is a workhorse: presidents, prosecutors, editorial writers and staffroom posters all reach for it, and nearly all of them hand the credit to Edmund Burke. The trouble is that no one has ever located it in Burke. What survives instead is a chain of near-misses stretching across a century and a half — Burke on bad men combining in 1770, Mill on good men looking on in 1867, an anonymous adage circulating in American newspapers by 1916 — none of them the sentence itself.

The credit hardened because two sources with real authority repeated it. Quote Investigator ↗ documents President John F. Kennedy quoting the modern wording to the Canadian Parliament on 17 May 1961 and naming Burke, and Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations printing it under Burke in its 1968 fourteenth edition with a citation precise enough to look settled: a letter to William Smith dated 9 January 1795. When someone finally checked the letter, the sentence was not in it.

Bartlett’s gave the line a date and a recipient. The letter turned out not to contain it.

What Burke actually wrote about good men and bad

Burke’s genuine passage comes from Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, a pamphlet against the influence of the Court on the House of Commons, first published 23 April 1770 ↗: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”

Read in context it is not a rebuke of bystanders at all — it is an argument for organised political parties, made by a man defending the idea that principled men should band together rather than operate as freelancers. The famous saying converts a case for collective politics into a case against personal passivity. That is a shift in meaning, not merely in wording, which is one reason the substitution is worth correcting.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Justice Courage Character

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator: the full chronologyquoteinvestigator.com

The definitive investigation. Dated citations from Burke (1770) and Mill (1867) through Aked (1916), Hyslop’s 1920 attribution to Burke, Kennedy (1961) and the Bartlett’s retraction, with QI’s conclusion that the record is too incomplete to name a creator.
Wikiquote: Misquotationsen.wikiquote.org

Lists the line under “Unsourced, unverified, or other best guesses” as falsely attributed to Burke, probably a paraphrase of Mill’s 1867 remark, and notes it has also been credited to Alexis de Tocqueville.
Mill’s St Andrews inaugural address, page 36en.wikisource.org

The scanned page of the 1867 first edition carrying the sentence “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
Barry Popik on the Burke attributionbarrypopik.com

Independent etymological research reaching the same verdict: the most-quoted statement attributed to Burke, with no definite original source, and “never traced in his writings.”
Burke, Thoughts on the Present Discontents (1770), full textgutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg’s edition of the 1770 pamphlet containing Burke’s genuine “when bad men combine” argument — so you can read what he actually wrote instead.
Open Culture: a quote falsely attributed to Burkeopenculture.com

A concise public write-up of the misattribution, quoting Mill’s fuller 1867 passage beginning “Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion…”

The closest documented source

Who came nearest, and when

John Stuart Mill

1806–1873 · English philosopher, economist & MP for Westminster

John Stuart Mill was the leading English philosopher of liberalism in the nineteenth century, author of On Liberty and Utilitarianism, a career administrator for the East India Company, and Liberal MP for the City of Westminster from 1865 to 1868. Elected Lord Rector of the University of St Andrews, he used his inaugural address of 1 February 1867 to argue that private citizens cannot excuse themselves from public judgement — and it is there that he wrote the line coming closest to the famous saying. He is the nearest documented antecedent, not the author of the popular wording: Mill wrote that bad men need only that good men “look on and do nothing,” which is a different sentence from the one the internet quotes.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Closest documented source

John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St. Andrews, Feb. 1st 1867 (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1867), p. 36 — the closest documented antecedent, not the popular wording. No source for the popular wording has been located in Edmund Burke; the earliest credit to Burke known to Quote Investigator is an address by Sir R. Murray Hyslop at the Fourth International Congregational Council, Boston, 5 July 1920.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing’?” Last verified 3 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-only-thing-necessary-for-the-triumph-of-evil-is-for/

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