Hanlon's razor


Hanlon's razor is an aphorism, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity", known in several other forms. It is a philosophical razor which suggests a way of eliminating unlikely explanations for human behavior. Similar statements have been recorded since at least the 18th century. It is probably named after Robert J. Hanlon, a person who submitted the idea to a joke book.

Origin

Inspired by Occam's razor, the aphorism became known in this form and under this name by the Jargon File, a glossary of computer programmer slang.
Later that same year, the Jargon File editors noted lack of knowledge about the term's derivation and the existence of a similar epigram by William James. In 1996, the Jargon File entry on Hanlon's Razor noted the existence of a similar quotation in Robert A. Heinlein's novella Logic of Empire, with speculation that Hanlon's Razor might be a corruption of "Heinlein's Razor".
In 2001, Quentin Stafford-Fraser published two blog entries citing e-mails from Joseph E. Bigler explaining that the quotation originally came from Robert J. Hanlon of Scranton, Pennsylvania, as a submission for a compilation of various jokes related to Murphy's Law that were published in Arthur Bloch's Murphy's Law Book Two: More Reasons Why Things Go Wrong!. Subsequently, in 2002, the Jargon File entry noted the same.

Other variations of the idea

Earlier attributions to the idea go back to at least the 18th century. First published in German Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote in The Sorrows of Young Werther :
An alternate expression of the idea comes from Jane West, in her novel The Loyalists: An Historical Novel :
A similar quote is also misattributed to Napoleon.
Andrew Roberts, in his biography of Winston Churchill, quotes from Churchill‘s correspondence with King George VI in February 1943 regarding disagreements with Charles De Gaulle: " 'De Gaulle is hostile to this country, and I put far more confidence in Giraud than in him,‘ he insisted, albeit allowing that his 'insolence...may be founded on stupidity rather than malice.' "