The Apple Cart quotes

Besides, the conflict is not really between royalty and democracy. It is between both and plutocracy, which, having destroyed the royal power by frank force under democratic pretexts, has bought and swallowed democracy.

Money talks: money prints: money broadcasts: money reigns

; and kings and labor leaders alike have to register its decrees, and even, by a staggering paradox, to finance its enterprises and guarantee its profits. Democracy is no longer bought: it is bilked.

Money talks: money prints: money broadcasts: money reigns; and kings and labor leaders alike have to register its decrees, and even, by a staggering paradox, to finance its enterprises and guarantee its profits.

Democracy is no longer bought: it is bilked.

Ministers who are Socialists to the backbone are as helpless in the grip of Breakages Limited as its acknowledged henchmen:

The other way about, Mr. Boanerges.

Punctuality is the politeness of kings; and King Magnus is a model in that respect.

Your arrival cannot have been announced to His Majesty. I will see about it. He hurries out.

Sarcastic. You’d like to be able to say “Off with his head!” wouldn’t you?

Many men would hardly miss their heads, there is so little in them.

Still, killing is a serious business: at least the person who is to be killed is usually conceited enough to think so. I think that if there were a question of killing me—

I know that the monarchy may come to an end at any moment. But while the monarchy lasts—while it lasts, mark you—I am very secure. I escape the dreadful and demoralizing drudgery of electioneering. I have no voters to please.

Ministers come and ministers go; but I go on forever.

The terrible precariousness of your position—

I am not a wonderful man. There is not a man or woman here whose job I could do as well as they do it.

I am Prime Minister for the same reason that all Prime Ministers have been Prime Ministers: because I am good for nothing else.

But I can keep to the point—when it suits me. And I can keep you to the point, sir, whether it suits you or not.

for I should never have dreamt of entering on a campaign of recrimination such as the Prime Minister suggested. As he has reminded you, my own character is far too vulnerable. A king is not allowed the luxury of a good character.

Our country has produced millions of blameless greengrocers, but not one blameless monarch.

I have to rule over more religious sects than I can count. To rule them impartially I must not belong to any of them; and they all regard people who do not belong to them as atheists.

whereas, for what a king does, he, and he alone, is held responsible.

A demagogue may steal a horse where a king dare not look over a hedge.

I doubt if that is any longer true, sir. I know that I get blamed for everything that goes wrong in my department.

In my opinion, ladies and gentlemen, we have done our bit, and may leave the rest to Joe. Matters had reached a point at which it was yes or no between the Cabinet and the Crown.

There is only one sort of committee that is better than a committee of two; and that is a committee of one.

Like the family in Wordsworth’s poem, we are seven—

Oh, you are blind. You are worse than blind: you have low tastes.

Heaven is offering you a rose; and you cling to a cabbage.

Laughing. That is a very apt metaphor, belovèd. But what wise man, if you force him to choose between doing without roses and doing without cabbages, would not secure the cabbages? Besides, all these old married cabbages were once roses;

Just what he is fit for. Commonplace. Bourgeoise. She trots through the streets shopping. Rising. I tread the plains of Heaven. Common women cannot come where I am; and common men find themselves out and slink away.

It must be magnificent to have the consciousness of a goddess without ever doing a thing to justify it.

Give me a goddess’s work to do; and I will do it. I will even stoop to a queen’s work if you will share the throne with me. But do not pretend that people become great by doing great things.

Orinthia: I did not place you in your present position. You placed yourself in it. I could not resist you.

You gathered me like a daisy.

Did you want to resist me?

Oh no.

I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.

Well, then, what are we talking about?

When the attraction becomes stronger than the distance the two do not embrace: they crash together in ruin. We two also have our orbits, and must keep an infinite distance between us to avoid a disastrous collision.

Keeping our distance is the whole secret of good manners; and without good manners human society is intolerable and impossible.

Would any other woman stand your sermons, and even like them?

Oh no:

I never fight. But I sometimes win.

If you let yourself be beaten by that trickster and poseur, never dare to approach me again.

With a sigh. Our own best families go so much to Ireland nowadays.

People should not be allowed to go from England to Ireland. They never come back.

Well, can you blame them, ma’am? Look at the climate!

You’re not serious, you know. He sits down.

You can’t upset the apple cart like this.

He sits down.