George Bernard Shaw

c. 1906–1907

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.

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c. 1906–1907

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.

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c. 1906–1907

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.

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c. 1906–1907

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.

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c. 1906–1907

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.

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c. 1906–1907

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

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c. 1906–1907

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.

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c. 1906–1907

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.

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c. 1906–1907

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.

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c. 1906–1907

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.

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c. 1906–1907

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.

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c. 1906–1907

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

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c. 1906–1907

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.

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c. 1906–1907

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.

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c. 1906–1907

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

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c. 1906–1907

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.

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c. 1906–1907

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

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