What George Bernard Shaw thinks about government
Irish playwright and polemicist (1856 to 1950); Nobel Prize in Literature laureate in 1925; author of Maxims for Revolutionists.
George Bernard Shaw did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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7 dated positions, c. 1906–1907, in their own words. Our reading of what George Bernard Shaw has said — not written or endorsed by them.
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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.
↗Preface to Major Barbara: First Aid to Critics (1906)gutenberg.org All 18 from this book
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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.
↗Preface to Major Barbara: First Aid to Critics (1906)gutenberg.org All 18 from this book
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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.
↗Preface to Major Barbara: First Aid to Critics (1906)gutenberg.org All 18 from this book
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Our readingChurches are tolerated only on condition that they preach submission to the capitalist state
Their wordsChurches are suffered to exist only on condition that they preach submission to the State as at present capitalistically organized.
↗Preface to Major Barbara: First Aid to Critics (1906)gutenberg.org All 18 from this book
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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.
↗Preface to Major Barbara: First Aid to Critics (1906)gutenberg.org All 18 from this book
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Their wordsIn short, all men are anarchists with regard to laws which are against their consciences, either in the preamble or in the penalty.
↗Preface to Major Barbara: First Aid to Critics (1906)gutenberg.org All 18 from this book
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Our readingThe benefits of society depend on how complex a code people will uphold, not on freedom from one
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.
↗Preface to Major Barbara: First Aid to Critics (1906)gutenberg.org All 18 from this book