Origins and Similar Quotations
The quotation first came from Robert J. Hanlon of Scranton, Pennsylvania, according to his friend Joseph Bigler, as a submission for a book compilation of various jokes related to Murphy's law published in 1980 titled Murphy's Law Book Two, More Reasons Why Things Go Wrong. The name was inspired by Occam's razor.
A similar quotation appears in Robert A. Heinlein's 1941 short story "Logic of Empire" ("You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity"); this was noticed in 1996 (five years before Bigler identified the Robert J. Hanlon citation) and first referenced in version 4.0.0 of the Jargon File, with speculation that Hanlon's Razor might be a corruption of "Heinlein's Razor". "Heinlein's Razor" has since been defined as variations on Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don't rule out malice. Yet another similar epigram ("Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence") has been widely attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. Another similar quotation appears in Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774): "...misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent."
A common (and more laconic) British English variation, coined by Sir Bernard Ingham, is the saying "cock-up before conspiracy", deriving from this quotation:
Many journalists have fallen for the conspiracy theory of government. I do assure you that they would produce more accurate work if they adhered to the cock-up theory. —Sir Bernard InghamRead more about this topic: Hanlon's Razor
Famous quotes containing the words origins, similar and/or quotations:
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“Thus was my first year’s life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th, 1847.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Reading any collection of a man’s quotations is like eating the ingredients that go into a stew instead of cooking them together in the pot. You eat all the carrots, then all the potatoes, then the meat. You won’t go away hungry, but it’s not quite satisfying. Only a biography, or autobiography, gives you the hot meal.”
—Christopher Buckley, U.S. author. A review of three books of quotations from Newt Gingrich. “Newtie’s Greatest Hits,” The New York Times Book Review (March 12, 1995)