Man and Superman quotes
The lines readers remember from Man and Superman, by George Bernard Shaw.
108 quotes · About the book
Standout lines
As for me, what I have always wanted is a pit of philosophers; and this is a play for such a pit.
Roebuck believes in the fine arts with all the earnestness of a man who does not understand them
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one, to his left, of John Bright; the other, to his right, of Mr. Herbert Spencer. Between them hang an engraved portrait of Richard Cobden; enlarged photographs of Martineau, Huxley, and George Eliot; autotypes of allegories by Mr. G. F. Watts (for
Roebuck believes in the fine arts with all the earnestness of a man who does not understand them
), and an impression of Dupont’s engraving of Delaroche’s Beaux Artes hemicycle, representing the great men of all ages. On the wall behind him, above the mantelshelf, is a family portrait of impenetrable obscurity.
The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor: he took my measure anew every time he saw me, whilst all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.
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Yes, because to be treated as a boy was to be taken on the old footing. I had become a new person; and those who knew the old person laughed at me.
The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor: he took my measure anew every time he saw me, whilst all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.
When you go to heaven, Ann, you will be frightfully conscious of your wings for the first year or so.
Yes: a funeral was always a festivity in black, especially the funeral of a relative.
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Placidly. I see you recognize the feeling.
Yes: a funeral was always a festivity in black, especially the funeral of a relative.
At all events, family ties are rarely kept up here. Your father is quite accustomed to this: he will not expect any devotion from you.
Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice.
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Call him liar and thief; and he will only take an action against you for libel. But call him coward; and he will go mad with rage: he will face death to outface that stinging truth.
Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice.
Yet all his civilization is founded on his cowardice, on his abject tameness, which he calls his respectability. There are limits to what a mule or an ass will stand;
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
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Any person under the age of thirty, who, having any knowledge of the existing social order, is not a revolutionist, is an inferior.
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
If there were no God, said the eighteenth century Deist, it would be necessary to invent Him. Now this eighteenth century god was deus ex machina, the god who helped those who could not help themselves, the god of the lazy and incapable.
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Epistle Dedicatory
But the lesson intended by an author is hardly ever the lesson the world chooses to learn from his book.
Civilized society is one huge bourgeoisie: no nobleman dares now shock his greengrocer.
Give women the vote, and in five years there will be a crushing tax on bachelors.
That is how the spider waits for the fly. But the spider spins her web.
The schoolboy who uses his Homer to throw at his fellow’s head makes perhaps the safest and most rational use of him
As for me, what I have always wanted is a pit of philosophers; and this is a play for such a pit.
Effectiveness of assertion is the Alpha and Omega of style.
And when he declares that art should not be didactic, all the people who have nothing to teach and all the people who don’t want to learn agree with him emphatically.
Act I
Even the top of Roebuck’s head is polished: on a sunshiny day he could heliograph his orders to distant camps by merely nodding.
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The study, handsomely and solidly furnished, proclaims the man of means. Not a speck of dust is visible: it is clear that there are at least two housemaids and a parlormaid downstairs, and a housekeeper upstairs who does not let them spare elbow-grease.
Even the top of Roebuck’s head is polished: on a sunshiny day he could heliograph his orders to distant camps by merely nodding.
In no other respect, however, does he suggest the military man.
Roebuck believes in the fine arts with all the earnestness of a man who does not understand them
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one, to his left, of John Bright; the other, to his right, of Mr. Herbert Spencer. Between them hang an engraved portrait of Richard Cobden; enlarged photographs of Martineau, Huxley, and George Eliot; autotypes of allegories by Mr. G. F. Watts (for
Roebuck believes in the fine arts with all the earnestness of a man who does not understand them
), and an impression of Dupont’s engraving of Delaroche’s Beaux Artes hemicycle, representing the great men of all ages. On the wall behind him, above the mantelshelf, is a family portrait of impenetrable obscurity.
A sensitive, susceptible, exaggerative, earnest man: a megalomaniac, who would be lost without a sense of humor.
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… is carefully dressed, not from the vanity that cannot resist finery, but from a sense of the importance of everything he does which leads him to make as much of paying a call as other men do of getting married or laying a foundation stone.
A sensitive, susceptible, exaggerative, earnest man: a megalomaniac, who would be lost without a sense of humor.
Just at present the sense of humor is in abeyance. To say that he is excited is nothing: all his moods are phases of excitement. He is now in the panic-stricken phase;
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
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Good Lord, my dear Ramsden, we are ashamed to walk, ashamed to ride in an omnibus, ashamed to hire a hansom instead of keeping a carriage, ashamed of keeping one horse instead of two and a groom-gardener instead of a coachman and footman.
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
Why, you’re ashamed to buy my book, ashamed to read it: the only thing you’re not ashamed of is to judge me for it without having read it; and even that only means that you’re ashamed to have heterodox opinions.
Cultivate a little impudence, Ramsden; and you will become quite a remarkable man.
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You have to fall back on my deficiency in shame. Well, I admit it. I even congratulate myself; for if I were ashamed of my real self, I should cut as stupid a figure as any of the rest of you.
Cultivate a little impudence, Ramsden; and you will become quite a remarkable man.
You have no desire for that sort of notoriety. Bless you, I knew that answer would come as well as I know that a box of matches will come out of an automatic machine when I put a penny in the slot:
Whether Ann is good-looking or not depends upon your taste; also and perhaps chiefly on your age and sex.
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The crushing retort for which Ramsden has been visibly collecting his forces is lost forever; for at this point Octavius returns with Miss Ann Whitefield and her mother; and Ramsden springs up and hurries to the door to receive them.
Whether Ann is good-looking or not depends upon your taste; also and perhaps chiefly on your age and sex.
To Octavius she is an enchantingly beautiful woman, in whose presence the world becomes transfigured, and the puny limits of individual consciousness are suddenly made infinite by a mystic memory of the whole life of the race to its beginnings in the east, or even …
Vitality is as common as humanity; but, like humanity, it sometimes rises to genius; and Ann is one of the vital geniuses.
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Turn up her nose, give a cast to her eye, replace her black and violet confection by the apron and feathers of a flower girl, strike all the aitches out of her speech, and Ann would still make men dream.
Vitality is as common as humanity; but, like humanity, it sometimes rises to genius; and Ann is one of the vital geniuses.
Not at all, if you please, an oversexed person: that is a vital defect, not a true excess. She is a perfectly respectable, perfectly self-controlled woman, and looks it; though her pose is fashionably frank and impulsive.
In short, what the weaker of her own sex sometimes call a cat.
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also some fear, perhaps, as a woman who will probably do everything she means to do without taking more account of other people than may be necessary and what she calls right.
In short, what the weaker of her own sex sometimes call a cat.
Nothing can be more decorous than her entry and her reception by Ramsden, whom she kisses. The late Mr.
Vitality in a woman is a blind fury of creation.
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Yes, of her purpose; and that purpose is neither her happiness nor yours, but Nature’s.
Vitality in a woman is a blind fury of creation.
She sacrifices herself to it: do you think she will hesitate to sacrifice you?
It is the self-sacrificing women that sacrifice others most recklessly.
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That is the profoundest of mistakes, Tavy.
It is the self-sacrificing women that sacrifice others most recklessly.
Because they are unselfish, they are kind in little things. Because they have a purpose which is not their own purpose, but that of the whole universe, a man is nothing to them but an instrument of that purpose.
Yes, as a soldier takes care of his rifle or a musician of his violin.
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Don’t be ungenerous, Jack. They take the tenderest care of us.
Yes, as a soldier takes care of his rifle or a musician of his violin.
But do they allow us any purpose or freedom of our own? Will they lend us to one another? Can the strongest man escape from them when once he is appropriated? They tremble when we are in danger, and weep when we die;
Oh, the tiger will love you. There is no love sincerer than the love of food.
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I meant where there is love, Jack.
Oh, the tiger will love you. There is no love sincerer than the love of food.
I think Ann loves you that way: she patted your cheek as if it were a nicely underdone chop.
Morality can go to its father the devil.
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Meaning a weeping Magdalen and an innocent child branded with her shame. Not in our circle, thank you.
Morality can go to its father the devil.
I thought so, sir. Morality sent to the devil to please our libertines, male and female. That is to be the future of England, is it?
Do you think that anything is strong enough to impose oughts on a passion except a stronger passion still?
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Ought!
Do you think that anything is strong enough to impose oughts on a passion except a stronger passion still?
Our moral sense controls passion, Jack. Don’t be stupid.
Is the devil to have all the passions as well as all the good times?
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Our moral sense! And is that not a passion?
Is the devil to have all the passions as well as all the good times?
If it were not a passion—if it were not the mightiest of the passions, all the other passions would sweep it away like a leaf before a hurricane. It is the birth of that passion that turns a child into a man.
Construction cumbers the ground with institutions made by busybodies. Destruction clears it and gives us breathing space and liberty.
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Yes. That is why it is so useful.
Construction cumbers the ground with institutions made by busybodies. Destruction clears it and gives us breathing space and liberty.
It’s no use, Jack. No woman will agree with you there.
The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor: he took my measure anew every time he saw me, whilst all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.
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Yes, because to be treated as a boy was to be taken on the old footing. I had become a new person; and those who knew the old person laughed at me.
The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor: he took my measure anew every time he saw me, whilst all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.
When you go to heaven, Ann, you will be frightfully conscious of your wings for the first year or so.
Act II
Eton is a boy farm where we are sent because we are nuisances at home, and because in after life, whenever a Duke is mentioned, we can claim him as an old schoolfellow.
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Sherbrooke Road! Would any of us say Rugby! Harrow! Eton! in that tone of intellectual snobbery? Sherbrooke Road is a place where boys learn something;
Eton is a boy farm where we are sent because we are nuisances at home, and because in after life, whenever a Duke is mentioned, we can claim him as an old schoolfellow.
You don’t know nothing about it, Mr. Tanner. It’s not the Board School that does it: it’s the Polytechnic.
Fool: it is you who are the pursued, the marked down quarry, the destined prey.
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the book about the bee is natural history. It’s an awful lesson to mankind. You think that you are Ann’s suitor; that you are the pursuer and she the pursued; that it is your part to woo, to persuade, to prevail, to overcome.
Fool: it is you who are the pursued, the marked down quarry, the destined prey.
You need not sit looking longingly at the bait through the wires of the trap: the door is open, and will remain so until it shuts behind you forever.
Marry Ann and at the end of a week you’ll find no more inspiration than in a plate of muffins.
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and yet they wrote first-rate poetry—at least so I’m told. They never exposed their idolatry to the test of domestic familiarity; and it lasted them to their graves.
Marry Ann and at the end of a week you’ll find no more inspiration than in a plate of muffins.
You think I shall tire of her.
It is the tame elephants who enjoy capturing the wild ones.
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Talk! Talk! It means nothing to you but talk. Well, go back to your mother, and help her to poison Rhoda’s imagination as she has poisoned yours.
It is the tame elephants who enjoy capturing the wild ones.
I am getting on. Yesterday I was a boa constrictor: today I am an elephant.
Yesterday I was a boa constrictor: today I am an elephant.
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I am getting on.
Yesterday I was a boa constrictor: today I am an elephant.
Yes. So pack your trunk and begone; I have no more to say to you.
Abyss beneath abyss of perfidy!
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I object! Why should I? I think it will do you good, Ann. Trotting over to Tanner. I meant to ask you to take Rhoda out for a run occasionally: she is too much in the house; but it will do when you come back.
Abyss beneath abyss of perfidy!
Hastily, to distract attention from this outburst. Oh, I forgot: you have not met Mr. Malone. Mr. Tanner, my guardian: Mr. Hector Malone.
The greatest common measure of a man and a woman is not necessarily greater than the man’s single measure.
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Drily. Get married and try. You may find it delightful for a while: you certainly won’t find it ennobling.
The greatest common measure of a man and a woman is not necessarily greater than the man’s single measure.
Well, we think in America that a woman’s moral number is higher than a man’s, and that the purer nature of a woman lifts a man right out of himself, and makes him better than he was.
Act III
I am a brigand: I live by robbing the rich.
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With dignity. Allow me to introduce myself: Mendoza, President of the League of the Sierra! Posing loftily.
I am a brigand: I live by robbing the rich.
Promptly. I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor. Shake hands.
I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor. Shake hands.
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Promptly.
I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor. Shake hands.
General laughter and good humor. Tanner and Mendoza shake hands. The Brigands drop into their former places.
It is the custom in Spain always to put off business until tomorrow.
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Mendoza delicately waives his presidential dignity, of which the right to sit on the squared stone block is the appanage, by sitting on the ground like his guests, and using the stone only as a support for his back.
It is the custom in Spain always to put off business until tomorrow.
In fact, you have arrived out of office hours. However, if you would prefer to settle the question of ransom at once, I am at your service.
Until a movement shows itself capable of spreading among brigands, it can never hope for a political majority.
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That is true, sir. A movement which is confined to philosophers and honest men can never exercise any real political influence: there are too few of them.
Until a movement shows itself capable of spreading among brigands, it can never hope for a political majority.
But are your brigands any less honest than ordinary citizens?
We are dregs and scum, sir: the dregs very filthy, the scum very superior.
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Sir: I will be frank with you. Brigandage is abnormal. Abnormal professions attract two classes: those who are not good enough for ordinary bourgeois life and those who are too good for it.
We are dregs and scum, sir: the dregs very filthy, the scum very superior.
Take care! Some o’ the dregs’ll hear you.
It does not matter: each brigand thinks himself scum, and likes to hear the others called dregs.
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Take care! Some o’ the dregs’ll hear you.
It does not matter: each brigand thinks himself scum, and likes to hear the others called dregs.
Come! You are a wit. Mendoza inclines his head, flattered. May one ask you a blunt question?
Louisa is not the rhyme, but the refrain.
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Of course not.
Louisa is not the rhyme, but the refrain.
Subsiding. Ah, the refrain. I beg your pardon. Go on.
In Hell, Señora, the Devil is the leader of the best society.
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The Devil! I speak to the Devil!
In Hell, Señora, the Devil is the leader of the best society.
I tell you, wretch, I know I am not in Hell.
Hell, Señora, is a place for the wicked. The wicked are quite comfortable in it: it was made for them.
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Because
Hell, Señora, is a place for the wicked. The wicked are quite comfortable in it: it was made for them.
You tell me you feel no pain. I conclude you are one of those for whom Hell exists.
Hell is the home of honor, duty, justice, and the rest of the seven deadly virtues. All the wickedness on Earth is done in their name: where else but in Hell should they have their reward?
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No; but there is justice in Hell: Heaven is far above such idle human personalities. You will be welcome in Hell, Señora.
Hell is the home of honor, duty, justice, and the rest of the seven deadly virtues. All the wickedness on Earth is done in their name: where else but in Hell should they have their reward?
Have I not told you that the truly damned are those who are happy in Hell?
Hell is a city much like Seville.
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Patience, lady: you will be perfectly happy and at home here. As saith the poet, “
Hell is a city much like Seville.
”
No more real devils than you will be a real lady. Nothing is real here. That is the horror of damnation.
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Never: they were devils, perfect devils, all of them. But that is only a manner of speaking. I thought you meant that my servants here would be real devils.
No more real devils than you will be a real lady. Nothing is real here. That is the horror of damnation.
Oh, this is all madness. This is worse than fire and the worm.
But in Hell old age is not tolerated. It is too real.
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A ripe age, Señora.
But in Hell old age is not tolerated. It is too real.
Here we worship love and beauty. Our souls being entirely damned, we cultivate our hearts. As a lady of 77, you would not have a single acquaintance in Hell.
Yes: a funeral was always a festivity in black, especially the funeral of a relative.
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Placidly. I see you recognize the feeling.
Yes: a funeral was always a festivity in black, especially the funeral of a relative.
At all events, family ties are rarely kept up here. Your father is quite accustomed to this: he will not expect any devotion from you.
Juan is a sound thinker, Ana. A bad fencer, but a sound thinker.
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You speak as this villain speaks.
Juan is a sound thinker, Ana. A bad fencer, but a sound thinker.
Horror creeping upon her. I begin to understand. These are devils, mocking me. I had better pray.
Hell, in short, is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.
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Only think what a relief that is! For what is hope? A form of moral responsibility. Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like.
Hell, in short, is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.
Don Juan sighs deeply. You sigh, friend Juan; but if you dwelt in Heaven, as I do, you would realize your advantages.
Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.
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Do you complain of that?
Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.
May not one lost soul be permitted to abstain?
It’s because Heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation: that’s why.
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Chuckling. I can tell you that, my dear.
It’s because Heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation: that’s why.
His excellency the Commander puts it with military bluntness; but the strain of living in Heaven is intolerable. There is a notion that I was turned out of it; but as a matter of fact nothing could have induced me to stay there.
Nobody could stand an eternity of Heaven.
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I don’t wonder at it.
Nobody could stand an eternity of Heaven.
Oh, it suits some people. Let us be just, Commander: it is a question of temperament. I don’t admire the Heavenly temperament: I don’t understand it: I don’t know that I particularly want to understand it; but it takes all sorts to make a universe.
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
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Yes: the Southerners give it up and join me just as you have done. But the English really do not seem to know when they are thoroughly miserable.
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
In short, my daughter, if you go to Heaven without being naturally qualified for it, you will not enjoy yourself there.
Heaven is the home of the masters of reality: that is why I am going thither.
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that what is spoken can be unspoken by withdrawing it; that what is true can be annihilated by a general agreement to give it the lie? No:
Heaven is the home of the masters of reality: that is why I am going thither.
Thank you: I am going to Heaven for happiness. I have had quite enough of reality on Earth.
Hell is the home of the unreal and of the seekers for happiness.
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Then you must stay here; for
Hell is the home of the unreal and of the seekers for happiness.
It is the only refuge from Heaven, which is, as I tell you, the home of the masters of reality, and from Earth, which is the home of the slaves of reality.
In Heaven, as I picture it, dear lady, you live and work instead of playing and pretending.
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To Don Juan. You have been so eloquent on the advantages of my dominions that I leave you to do equal justice to the drawbacks of the alternative establishment.
In Heaven, as I picture it, dear lady, you live and work instead of playing and pretending.
You face things as they are; you escape nothing but glamor; and your steadfastness and your peril are your glory. If the play still goes on here and on Earth, and all the world is a stage, Heaven is at least behind the scenes.
Stupidity has all the knowledge, and Imagination all the intelligence.
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Imagination resolved to starve sooner than face these realities, piling up illusions to hide them, and calling itself cleverness, genius! And each accusing the other of its own defect: Stupidity accusing Imagination of folly, and Imagination accusing Stupidity of ignorance: whereas, alas!
Stupidity has all the knowledge, and Imagination all the intelligence.
And a pretty kettle of fish they make of it between them. Did I not say, when I was arranging that affair of Faust’s, that all Man’s reason has done for him is to make him beastlier than any beast.
What is his religion? An excuse for hating me. What is his law? An excuse for hanging you.
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There is nothing in Man’s industrial machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in his weapons. This marvellous force of life of which you boast is a force of death: Man measures his strength by his destructiveness.
What is his religion? An excuse for hating me. What is his law? An excuse for hanging you.
What is his morality? Gentility! An excuse for consuming without producing. What is his art? An excuse for gloating over pictures of slaughter. What are his politics? Either the worship of a despot because a despot can kill, or parliamentary cockfighting.
Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice.
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Call him liar and thief; and he will only take an action against you for libel. But call him coward; and he will go mad with rage: he will face death to outface that stinging truth.
Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice.
Yet all his civilization is founded on his cowardice, on his abject tameness, which he calls his respectability. There are limits to what a mule or an ass will stand;
It is not death that matters, but the fear of death. It is not killing and dying that degrade us, but base living, and accepting the wages and profits of degradation.
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What of that?
It is not death that matters, but the fear of death. It is not killing and dying that degrade us, but base living, and accepting the wages and profits of degradation.
Better ten dead men than one live slave or his master. Men shall yet rise up, father against son and brother against brother, and kill one another for the great Catholic idea of abolishing slavery.
Better ten dead men than one live slave or his master.
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What of that? It is not death that matters, but the fear of death. It is not killing and dying that degrade us, but base living, and accepting the wages and profits of degradation.
Better ten dead men than one live slave or his master.
Men shall yet rise up, father against son and brother against brother, and kill one another for the great Catholic idea of abolishing slavery.
Sexually, Man is Woman’s contrivance for fulfilling Nature’s behest in the most economical way.
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I said nothing about a woman’s whole mind. I spoke of her view of Man as a separate sex. It is no more cynical than her view of herself as above all things a mother. Sexually, Woman is Nature’s contrivance for perpetuating its highest achievement.
Sexually, Man is Woman’s contrivance for fulfilling Nature’s behest in the most economical way.
She knows by instinct that far back in the evolutional process she invented him, differentiated him, created him in order to produce something better than the single-sexed process can produce.
Without a brain, Commander, you would enjoy yourself without knowing it, and so lose all the fun.
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What I was going to ask Juan was why life should bother itself about getting a brain. Why should it want to understand itself? Why not be content to enjoy itself?
Without a brain, Commander, you would enjoy yourself without knowing it, and so lose all the fun.
True, most true. But I am quite content with brain enough to know that I’m enjoying myself. I don’t want to understand why. In fact, I’d rather not. My experience is that one’s pleasures don’t bear thinking about.
My experience is that one’s pleasures don’t bear thinking about.
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True, most true. But I am quite content with brain enough to know that I’m enjoying myself. I don’t want to understand why. In fact, I’d rather not.
My experience is that one’s pleasures don’t bear thinking about.
That is why intellect is so unpopular. But to life, the force behind the Man, intellect is a necessity, because without it he blunders into death.
When the military man approaches, the world locks up its spoons and packs off its womankind.
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Commander: I do not mean the military man.
When the military man approaches, the world locks up its spoons and packs off its womankind.
No: I sing, not arms and the hero, but the philosophic man:
I was not duped: I took her without chloroform.
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I had been prepared for infatuation, for intoxication, for all the illusions of love’s young dream; and lo! Never was my perception clearer, nor my criticism more ruthless. The most jealous rival of my mistress never saw every blemish in her more keenly than I.
I was not duped: I took her without chloroform.
But you did take her.
It was Woman who taught me to say “I am; therefore I think.”
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never consciously taken a single step until my reason had examined and approved it. I had come to believe that I was a purely rational creature: a thinker! I said, with the foolish philosopher, “I think; therefore I am.”
It was Woman who taught me to say “I am; therefore I think.”
And also “I would think more; therefore I must be more.”
In that case, what is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?
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She is less virtuous: that is enough for me.
In that case, what is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?
Let us face the facts, dear Ana. The life force respects marriage only because marriage is a contrivance of its own to secure the greatest number of children and the closest care of them.
If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
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You cannot have the argument both ways.
If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
At all events, let me take an old woman’s privilege again, and tell you flatly that marriage peoples the world and debauchery does not.
Nature is a pander, time a wrecker, and death a murderer.
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Nature, my dear lady, is what you call immoral. I blush for it; but I cannot help it.
Nature is a pander, time a wrecker, and death a murderer.
I have always preferred to stand up to those facts and build institutions on their recognition. You prefer to propitiate the three devils by proclaiming their chastity, their thrift, and their loving kindness; and to base your institutions on these flatteries.
I tell you that as long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.
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On the contrary, here I have everything that disappointed me without anything that I have not already tried and found wanting.
I tell you that as long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.
That is the law of my life. That is the working within me of life’s incessant aspiration to higher organization, wider, deeper, intenser self-consciousness, and clearer self-understanding.
They are not beautiful: they are only decorated. They are not clean: they are only shaved and starched.
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Pooh! Why should I be civil to them or to you? In this Palace of Lies a truth or two will not hurt you. Your friends are all the dullest dogs I know.
They are not beautiful: they are only decorated. They are not clean: they are only shaved and starched.
They are not dignified: they are only fashionably dressed. They are not educated they are only college passmen. They are not religious: they are only pewrenters. They are not moral: they are only conventional. They are not virtuous: they are only cowardly.
The philosopher is Nature’s pilot.
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Why, to be able to choose the line of greatest advantage instead of yielding in the direction of the least resistance. Does a ship sail to its destination no better than a log drifts nowhither?
The philosopher is Nature’s pilot.
And there you have our difference: to be in Hell is to drift: to be in Heaven is to steer.
And there you have our difference: to be in Hell is to drift: to be in Heaven is to steer.
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Why, to be able to choose the line of greatest advantage instead of yielding in the direction of the least resistance. Does a ship sail to its destination no better than a log drifts nowhither? The philosopher is Nature’s pilot.
And there you have our difference: to be in Hell is to drift: to be in Heaven is to steer.
On the rocks, most likely.
Oh, the frontier is only the difference between two ways of looking at things. Any road will take you across it if you really want to get there.
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By no means. But though there is much to be learnt from a cynical devil, I really cannot stand a sentimental one. Señor Commander: you know the way to the frontier of Hell and Heaven. Be good enough to direct me.
Oh, the frontier is only the difference between two ways of looking at things. Any road will take you across it if you really want to get there.
Good. Saluting Doña Ana. Señora: your servant.
Beware of the pursuit of the Superhuman: it leads to an indiscriminate contempt for the Human.
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Aye, Rembrandt. There a something unnatural about these fellows. Do not listen to their gospel, Señor Commander: it is dangerous.
Beware of the pursuit of the Superhuman: it leads to an indiscriminate contempt for the Human.
To a man, horses and dogs and cats are mere species, outside the moral world. Well, to the Superman, men and women are a mere species too, also outside the moral world.
Superman is a good cry; and a good cry is half the battle.
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It was he who raked up the Superman, who is as old as Prometheus; and the 20th century will run after this newest of the old crazes when it gets tired of the world, the flesh, and your humble servant.
Superman is a good cry; and a good cry is half the battle.
I should like to see this Nietzsche.
Act IV
I’ve noticed, madam, that every thousand dollars an Englishman gets seems to add one to the number of people he’s dependent on.
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He can drive a motor car at seventy miles an hour, and mend it when it breaks down. We are dependent on our motor cars; and our motor cars are dependent on him; so of course we are dependent on him.
I’ve noticed, madam, that every thousand dollars an Englishman gets seems to add one to the number of people he’s dependent on.
However, you needn’t apologize for your man: I made him talk on purpose. By doing so I learnt that you’re staying here in Grannida with a party of English, including my son Hector.
Men thrive better on disappointments in love than on disappointments in money.
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He will get over it all right enough.
Men thrive better on disappointments in love than on disappointments in money.
I daresay you think that sordid; but I know what I’m talking about. My father died of starvation in Ireland in the black 47, Maybe you’ve heard of it.
Always is a long word, Tavy.
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I do. It sounds ridiculous; but it’s no exaggeration. I do; and I always shall.
Always is a long word, Tavy.
You see, I shall have to live up always to your idea of my divinity; and I don’t think I could do that if we were married. But if I marry Jack, you’ll never be disillusioned—at least not until I grow too old.
A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.
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Oh no you won’t: that wouldn’t be kind. You won’t have a bad time. You will be very nice to women; and you will go a good deal to the opera.
A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.
Considerably cooled, but believing that he is only recovering his self-control. I know you mean to be kind, Ann. Jack has persuaded you that cynicism is a good tonic for me. He rises with quiet dignity.
There’s no such thing as a willing man when you really go for him.
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What a queer creature you are, Tavy!
There’s no such thing as a willing man when you really go for him.
She laughs naughtily. I’m shocking you, I suppose. But you know you are really getting a sort of satisfaction already in being out of danger yourself.
The only really simple thing is to go straight for what you want and grab it.
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Yes: it seems quite simple. But I doubt if we ever know why we do things.
The only really simple thing is to go straight for what you want and grab it.
I suppose I don’t love you, Tavy; but sometimes I feel as if I should like to make a man of you somehow. You are very foolish about women.
No man is a match for a woman, except with a poker and a pair of hobnailed boots. Not always even then.
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Slyly. She’d suit you better than Tavy. She’d meet her match in you, Jack. I’d like to see her meet her match.
No man is a match for a woman, except with a poker and a pair of hobnailed boots. Not always even then.
Anyhow, I can’t take the poker to her. I should be a mere slave.
You clean men as you clean milk pails, by scalding them.
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No, a thousand times no: hot water is the revolutionist’s element.
You clean men as you clean milk pails, by scalding them.
Cold water has its uses too. It’s healthy.
Sir: there are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.
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Advancing between Violet and Tanner.
Sir: there are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.
Mine and yours, sir.
Preface to the Revolutionist’s Handbook
Every man is a revolutionist concerning the thing he understands.
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That is what a general election enables the people to do in England every seven years if they choose. Revolution is therefore a national institution in England; and its advocacy by an Englishman needs no apology.
Every man is a revolutionist concerning the thing he understands.
For example, every person who has mastered a profession is a sceptic concerning it, and consequently a revolutionist.
Any person under the age of thirty, who, having any knowledge of the existing social order, is not a revolutionist, is an inferior.
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All who achieve real distinction in life begin as revolutionists. The most distinguished persons become more revolutionary as they grow older, though they are commonly supposed to become more conservative owing to their loss of faith in conventional methods of reform.
Any person under the age of thirty, who, having any knowledge of the existing social order, is not a revolutionist, is an inferior.
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
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Any person under the age of thirty, who, having any knowledge of the existing social order, is not a revolutionist, is an inferior.
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
If there were no God, said the eighteenth century Deist, it would be necessary to invent Him. Now this eighteenth century god was deus ex machina, the god who helped those who could not help themselves, the god of the lazy and incapable.
VIII: The Conceit of Civilization
The Christian doctrine of the uselessness of punishment and the wickedness of revenge has not, in spite of its simple common sense, found a single convert among the nations: Christianity means nothing to the masses but a sensational public execution which is made an excuse for other executions.
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We have relapsed into disputes about transubstantiation at the very moment when the discovery of the wide prevalence of theophagy as a tribal custom has deprived us of the last excuse for believing that our official religious rites differ in essentials from those of barbarians.
The Christian doctrine of the uselessness of punishment and the wickedness of revenge has not, in spite of its simple common sense, found a single convert among the nations: Christianity means nothing to the masses but a sensational public execution which is made an excuse for other executions.
In its name we take ten years of a thief’s life minute by minute in the slow misery and degradation of modern reformed imprisonment with as little remorse as Laud and his Star Chamber clipped the ears of Bastwick and Burton.
Parliaments and vestries are just what they were when Cromwell suppressed them and Dickens derided them.
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The incidents of the white invasion of Africa in search of ivory, gold, diamonds, and sport, have proved that the modern European is the same beast of prey that formerly marched to the conquest of new worlds under Alexander, Antony, and Pizarro.
Parliaments and vestries are just what they were when Cromwell suppressed them and Dickens derided them.
The democratic politician remains exactly as Plato described him; the physician is still the credulous impostor and petulant scientific coxcomb whom Molière ridiculed; the schoolmaster remains at best a pedantic child farmer and at worst a flagellomaniac;
Cowardice is universal; patriotism, public opinion, parental duty, discipline, religion, morality, are only fine names for intimidation; and cruelty, gluttony, and credulity keep cowardice in countenance.
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… more of it, constant as the clamor for more insolence, more war, and lower rates, is tolerated and even gratified because, having no moral ends in view, we have sense enough to see that nothing but brute coercion can impose our selfish will on others.
Cowardice is universal; patriotism, public opinion, parental duty, discipline, religion, morality, are only fine names for intimidation; and cruelty, gluttony, and credulity keep cowardice in countenance.
We cut the throat of a calf and hang it up by the heels to bleed to death so that our veal cutlet may be white; we nail geese to a board and cram them with food because we like the taste of liver disease;
Some of these changes are gains: some of them are losses. Some of them are not changes at all: all of them are merely the changes that money makes.
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public steps are taken to house the masses decently; the barefooted get boots; rags become rare; and bathrooms and pianos, smart tweeds and starched collars, reach numbers of people who once, as “the unsoaped,” played the Jew’s harp or the accordion in moleskins and belchers.
Some of these changes are gains: some of them are losses. Some of them are not changes at all: all of them are merely the changes that money makes.
Still, they produce an illusion of bustling progress; and the reading class infers from them that the abuses of the early Victorian period no longer exist except as amusing pages in the novels of Dickens.
The world will not bear thinking of to those who know what it is, even with the largest discount for the restraints of poverty on the poor and cowardice on the rich.
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The only novelty is in our methods: through the discovery of dynamite the overloaded musket of Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh has been superseded by the bomb; but Ravachol’s heart burns just as Hamilton’s did.
The world will not bear thinking of to those who know what it is, even with the largest discount for the restraints of poverty on the poor and cowardice on the rich.
All that can be said for us is that people must and do live and let live up to a certain point.
Our remedies are still limited to endurance or assassination; and the assassin is still judicially assassinated on the principle that two blacks make a white.
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The very humanitarians who abhor them are stirred to murder by them: the dagger of Brutus and Ravaillac is still active in the hands of Caserio and Luccheni; and the pistol has come to its aid in the hands of Guiteau and Czolgosz.
Our remedies are still limited to endurance or assassination; and the assassin is still judicially assassinated on the principle that two blacks make a white.
The only novelty is in our methods: through the discovery of dynamite the overloaded musket of Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh has been superseded by the bomb; but Ravachol’s heart burns just as Hamilton’s did.
IX: The Verdict of History
This view is very acceptable to Englishmen, who always lean sincerely to virtue’s side as long as it costs them nothing either in money or in thought.
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It may be said that though the wild beast breaks out in Man and casts him back momentarily into barbarism under the excitement of war and crime, yet his normal life is higher than the normal life of his forefathers.
This view is very acceptable to Englishmen, who always lean sincerely to virtue’s side as long as it costs them nothing either in money or in thought.
They feel deeply the injustice of foreigners, who allow them no credit for this conditional highmindedness. But there is no reason to suppose that our ancestors were less capable of it than we are.
But does any man seriously believe that the chauffeur who drives a motor car from Paris to Berlin is a more highly evolved man than the charioteer of Achilles, or that a modern Prime Minister is a more enlightened ruler than Caesar because he rides a tricycle, writes his dispatches by the electric light, and instructs his stockbroker through the telephone?
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things which, unlike the gospels and philosophic treatises of the sages, can be usefully understood and applied by common men; so that steam locomotion is possible without a nation of Stephensons, although national Christianity is impossible without a nation of Christs.
But does any man seriously believe that the chauffeur who drives a motor car from Paris to Berlin is a more highly evolved man than the charioteer of Achilles, or that a modern Prime Minister is a more enlightened ruler than Caesar because he rides a tricycle, writes his dispatches by the electric light, and instructs his stockbroker through the telephone?
Enough, then, of this goose-cackle about progress: Man, as he is, never will nor can add a cubit to his stature by any of its quackeries, political, scientific, educational, religious, or artistic.
Enough, then, of this goose-cackle about progress: Man, as he is, never will nor can add a cubit to his stature by any of its quackeries, political, scientific, educational, religious, or artistic.
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… to Berlin is a more highly evolved man than the charioteer of Achilles, or that a modern Prime Minister is a more enlightened ruler than Caesar because he rides a tricycle, writes his dispatches by the electric light, and instructs his stockbroker through the telephone?
Enough, then, of this goose-cackle about progress: Man, as he is, never will nor can add a cubit to his stature by any of its quackeries, political, scientific, educational, religious, or artistic.
What is likely to happen when this conviction gets into the minds of the men whose present faith in these illusions is the cement of our social system, can be imagined only by those who know how suddenly a civilization which has long ceased to …
Our only hope, then, is in evolution. We must replace the man by the superman.
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A nation which revises its parish councils once in three years, but will not revise its articles of religion once in three hundred, even when those articles avowedly began as a political compromise dictated by Mr. Facing-Both-Ways, is a nation that needs remaking.
Our only hope, then, is in evolution. We must replace the man by the superman.
It is frightful for the citizen, as the years pass him, to see his own contemporaries so exactly reproduced by the younger generation, that his companions of thirty years ago have their counterparts in every city crowd, where he had to check himself repeatedly in …
Men like Ruskin and Carlyle will preach to Smith and Brown for the sake of preaching, just as St. Francis preached to the birds and St. Anthony to the fishes.
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… that they will do just what their fathers did, and that the few voices which will still, as always before, exhort them to do something else and be something better, might as well spare their breath to cool their porridge (if they can get any).
Men like Ruskin and Carlyle will preach to Smith and Brown for the sake of preaching, just as St. Francis preached to the birds and St. Anthony to the fishes.
But Smith and Brown, like the fishes and birds, remain as they are;
But Smith and Brown, like the fishes and birds, remain as they are; and poets who plan Utopias and prove that nothing is necessary for their realization but that Man should will them, perceive at last, like Richard Wagner, that the fact to be faced is that Man does not effectively will them.
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Men like Ruskin and Carlyle will preach to Smith and Brown for the sake of preaching, just as St. Francis preached to the birds and St. Anthony to the fishes.
But Smith and Brown, like the fishes and birds, remain as they are; and poets who plan Utopias and prove that nothing is necessary for their realization but that Man should will them, perceive at last, like Richard Wagner, that the fact to be faced is that Man does not effectively will them.
And he never will until he becomes Superman.
We must eliminate the Yahoo, or his vote will wreck the commonwealth.
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The only fundamental and possible Socialism is the socialization of the selective breeding of Man: in other terms, of human evolution.
We must eliminate the Yahoo, or his vote will wreck the commonwealth.
As to the method, what can be said as yet except that where there is a will, there is a way? If there be no will, we are lost. That is a possibility for our crazy little empire, if not for the universe;
X: The Method
As to the method, what can be said as yet except that where there is a will, there is a way? If there be no will, we are lost.
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The only fundamental and possible Socialism is the socialization of the selective breeding of Man: in other terms, of human evolution. We must eliminate the Yahoo, or his vote will wreck the commonwealth.
As to the method, what can be said as yet except that where there is a will, there is a way? If there be no will, we are lost.
That is a possibility for our crazy little empire, if not for the universe;
Simply because it did not matter a rap politically whom the tinker married, whereas it mattered very much whom the king married.
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Let those who think the whole conception of intelligent breeding absurd and scandalous ask themselves why George IV was not allowed to choose his own wife whilst any tinker could marry whom he pleased?
Simply because it did not matter a rap politically whom the tinker married, whereas it mattered very much whom the king married.
The way in which all considerations of the king’s personal rights, of the claims of the heart, of the sanctity of the marriage oath, and of romantic morality crumpled up before this political need shows how negligible all these apparently irresistible prejudices are when they …
Well, nowadays it is not the King that rules, but the tinker.
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We learn the same lesson from the case of the soldier, whose marriage, when it is permitted at all, is despotically controlled with a view solely to military efficiency.
Well, nowadays it is not the King that rules, but the tinker.
Dynastic wars are no longer feared, dynastic alliances no longer valued. Marriages in royal families are becoming rapidly less political, and more popular, domestic, and romantic.
The overthrow of the aristocrat has created the necessity for the Superman.
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There is no public enthusiast alive of twenty years’ practical democratic experience who believes in the political adequacy of the electorate or of the bodies it elects.
The overthrow of the aristocrat has created the necessity for the Superman.
Englishmen hate liberty and equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves and desires a pedigree. And in that he is right. King Demos must be bred like all other Kings; and with Must there is no arguing.
If all the kings in Europe were made as free tomorrow as King Cophetua, nobody but their aunts and chamberlains would feel a moment’s anxiety as to the consequences.
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Well, nowadays it is not the King that rules, but the tinker. Dynastic wars are no longer feared, dynastic alliances no longer valued. Marriages in royal families are becoming rapidly less political, and more popular, domestic, and romantic.
If all the kings in Europe were made as free tomorrow as King Cophetua, nobody but their aunts and chamberlains would feel a moment’s anxiety as to the consequences.
On the other hand a sense of the social importance of the tinker’s marriage has been steadily growing. We have made a public matter of his wife’s health in the month after her confinement.
Englishmen hate liberty and equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves and desires a pedigree.
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There is no public enthusiast alive of twenty years’ practical democratic experience who believes in the political adequacy of the electorate or of the bodies it elects. The overthrow of the aristocrat has created the necessity for the Superman.
Englishmen hate liberty and equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves and desires a pedigree.
And in that he is right. King Demos must be bred like all other Kings; and with Must there is no arguing. It is idle for an individual writer to carry so great a matter further in a pamphlet.
King Demos must be bred like all other Kings; and with Must there is no arguing.
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Englishmen hate liberty and equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves and desires a pedigree. And in that he is right.
King Demos must be bred like all other Kings; and with Must there is no arguing.
It is idle for an individual writer to carry so great a matter further in a pamphlet. A conference on the subject is the next step needed.
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