Important Quotations Explained
CUSINS: By the way, have you any religion?
UNDERSHAFT: Only that there are two things necessary to Salvation.
CUSINS [disappointed, but polite]: Ah, the Church Catechism. Charles Lomax also belongs to the Established Church.
UNDERSHAFT: The two things are—
CUSINS: Baptism and— UNDERSHAFT: No. Money and gunpowder. CUSINS [surprised, but interested] That is the general opinion of our governing classes. The novelty is hearing any man confess it.
UNDERSHAFT: Just so.
CUSINS: Excuse me: is there any lace in your religion for honor, justice, truth, love, mercy, and so forth?
UNDERSHAFT: Yes: they are the graces and luxuries of a rich, strong, and safe life.
Ought! Ought! Ought! Ought! Ought! Are you going to spend your life saying ought, like the rest of our moralists? Turn your oughts into shalls, man. Come and make explosives with me. Whatever can blow men up can blow society up. The history of the world is the history of those who had the courage to embrace this truth.
there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed people. They poison us morally and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty.
There is no wicked side: life is all one. And I never wanted to shirk my share in whatever evil must be endured, whether it be sin or suffering. I wish I could cure you of middle-class ideas, Dolly.
CUSINS [gasping]: Middle cl—! A snub! A social snub to me! From the daughter of a foundling!
BARBARA: That is why I have no class, Dolly: I come straight out of the heart of the whole people. If were middle class, I should turn my back on my father's business
Well you see, my dear boy, when you are organizing civilization you have to make up your mind whether trouble and anxiety are good things or not. If you decide that they are, then, I take it, you simply don't organize civilization; and there you are, with trouble and anxiety enough to make us all angels! But if you decide the other way, you might as well go through with it.
