The phrase "No good deed goes unpunished" is a sardonic commentary on the frequency with which acts of kindness backfire on those who offer them. In other words, those who help others are doomed to suffer as a result of their helpfulness.
The phrase "No good deed goes unpunished" is a sardonic commentary on the frequency with which acts of kindness backfire on those who offer them. In other words, those who help others are doomed to suffer as a result of their helpfulness.
The phrase is first attested in Walter Map's 12th-century De nugis curialium , in whose fourth chapter the character Eudo adhered to inverted morality "left no good deed unpunished, no bad one unrewarded". [1] [2]
Conventional moral wisdom holds that evil deeds are punished by divine providence and good deeds are rewarded by divine providence: [1]
For as punishment is to the evil act, so is reward to a good act. Now no evil deed is unpunished, by God the just judge. Therefore no good deed is unrewarded, and so every good deed merits some good. [a]
This is related to the concepts of Hell and of karma.
The modern expression "No good deed goes unpunished" is an ironic twist on this conventional morality. [1]
The ironic usage of the phrase appears to be a 20th-century invention, found for example in Brendan Gill's 1950 novel The Trouble of One House. [3] It is also featured prominently in the song "No Good Deed", from the 2003 hit Broadway musical Wicked . [4] A satirical poem by Franklin Pierce Adams with the title "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished (So Shines a Good Deed in a Naughty World)" also exists. [5]
In 2005, author David Helvarg introduced the concept that the punishment may be a form of retaliation, in a piece he wrote for Grist Magazine , "Remember that sign they hung up in an EPA office during the Reagan administration, 'No good deed goes unpunished'? Under George Bush, no good science goes unpunished." [6]
The dictionary definition of no good deed goes unpunished at Wiktionary