Logic of Empire (p. 335); this is one of the earliest known variants of an idea which has become known as Hanlon's razor.
Short fiction, The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)
Source: The Green Hills of Earth
Source: The Doctrine of the Mean
“You simply cannot tell other people they are stupid, even if they really are stupid.”
Source: The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism & Asperger's
“Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.”
Source: Surfacing
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
Murphy's Law Book Two : More Reasons Why Things Go Wrong! (1980) ISBN 0843106743 by Arthur Bloch page 52.
This statement has often been referred to as Hanlon's Razor, though the author himself has remained relatively unknown, and some theories arose that "Hanlon" might have been a corruption of "Heinlein". Hanlon actually was a winner in a contest to come up with further statements similar to "Murphy's Law", for publication in this particular book. This phrase or very similar statements have also been attributed to William James, Napoleon Bonaparte, Richard Feynman (who might well have quoted it) and others.
Similar statements have been made by Goethe, and indeed, Robert Heinlein:
In The Sorrows of Young Werther Goethe declared, "Misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent occurrence."
In his story Logic of Empire (1941) Heinlein declares: "You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity". He calls this the "devil theory" of sociology. His character Lazarus Long also voices a variation on the theme in the novel Time Enough for Love: "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."
Variants of the phrase which have been variously attributed to this wide assortment of authors include:
Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
The Beast of Property (1884)
“Don't ascribe to evil what can be attributed to well-intentioned stupidity.”
Source: The Shadow Dragons
"Our Cruel Treatment of Animals Led to the Coronavirus" https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/opinion/animal-cruelty-coronavirus.html, The New York Times, April 13, 2020.
In operant conditioning we "strengthen" an operant in the sense of making a response more probable or, in actual fact, more frequent.
Science and Human Behavior (1953)
Part I, Ch. 2 : The Evanescence of Evil, § 1
Social Statics (1851)
Context: All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions. This is true of everything that lives. Does a shrub dwindle in poor soil, or become sickly when deprived of light, or die outright if removed to a cold climate? it is because the harmony between its organization and its circumstances has been destroyed.
