Preface to Major Barbara: First Aid to Critics (1906)

Their wordsFor instance, we seize a man and deliberately do him a malicious injury: say, imprison him for years. One would not suppose that it needed any exceptional clearness of wit to recognize in this an act of diabolical cruelty.

Their wordsThe sensible course would be Cobden-Sanderson's: that is, to give every man enough to live well on, so as to guarantee the community against the possibility of a case of the malignant disease of poverty, and then (necessarily) to see that he earned it.

Their wordsMoney is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty as conspicuously and undeniably as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness and ugliness.

Their wordsThe crying need of the nation is not for better morals, cheaper bread, temperance, liberty, culture, redemption of fallen sisters and erring brothers, nor the grace, love and fellowship of the Trinity, but simply for enough money.

Their wordsAnd the evil to be attacked is not sin, suffering, greed, priestcraft, kingcraft, demagogy, monopoly, ignorance, drink, war, pestilence, nor any other of the scapegoats which reformers sacrifice, but simply poverty.

Their wordsThe notion that you can earmark certain coins as tainted is an unpractical individualist superstition.

Their wordsChristianity, in making a merit of such submission, has marked only that depth in the abyss at which the very sense of shame is lost.

Their wordsIt is building up a business organization which will compel it eventually to see that its present staff of enthusiast-commanders shall be succeeded by a bureaucracy of men of business who will be no better than bishops, and perhaps a good deal more unscrupulous.

Their wordsForgiveness, absolution, atonement, are figments: punishment is only a pretence of cancelling one crime by another; and you can no more have forgiveness without vindictiveness than you can have a cure without a disease.

Their wordsWhat a man is depends on his character; but what he does, and what we think of what he does, depends on his circumstances.

Their wordsIt is quite useless to declare that all men are born free if you deny that they are born good. Guarantee a man's goodness and his liberty will take care of itself.

Their wordsChurches are suffered to exist only on condition that they preach submission to the State as at present capitalistically organized.

Their wordsBut there is a nobler and profounder Christianity which affirms the sacred mystery of Equality, and forbids the glaring futility and folly of vengeance, often politely called punishment or justice.

Their wordsGiven a tribunal, employing a slayer who has no personal quarrel with the slain; and there is clearly no moral difference between official and unofficial killing.

Their wordsIn short, all men are anarchists with regard to laws which are against their consciences, either in the preamble or in the penalty.

Their wordsThe advantages of living in society are proportionate, not to the freedom of the individual from a code, but to the complexity and subtlety of the code he is prepared not only to accept but to uphold as a matter of such vital importance that a lawbreaker at large is hardly to be tolerated on any plea.

Their wordsWe shall never have real moral responsibility until everyone knows that his deeds are irrevocable, and that his life depends on his usefulness.

Their wordsCreeds must become intellectually honest. At present there is not a single credible established religion in the world.