Polemicist Quotes

“Affection between adults - if they are really adult in mind and not merely grown up children - and creatures so relatively selfish and cruel as children necessarily are without knowing it or meaning it, cannot be called natural.”

“A moderately honest man with a moderately faithful wife, moderate drinkers both, in a moderately healthy house: that is the true middle class unit.”

“The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist”

“Anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you.”

“I claim to be a conscientiously immoral writer.”

“An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.”

“Assasination on the scaffold is the worst form of assasination, because there it is invested with the approval of society.”

“Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.”

“Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind. It is the deed that teaches not the name we give it.”

“Women are called womanly only when they regard themselves as existing solely for the use of men.”

“Optimistic lies have such immense therapeutic value that a doctor who cannot tell them convincingly has mistaken his profession.”

“You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.”

“To make Democracy work, you need an aristocratic democracy. To make Aristocracy work, you need a democratic aristocracy.”

“Marx's Kapital is not a treatise on socialism; it is a gerrymand against the bourgeoisie. It was supposed to be written for the working class, but the working man respects the bourgeoisie and wants to be a bourgeoisie. Marx never got a hold of him for a moment. It was the revolting sons of the bourgeoisie itself, like myself, that painted the flag red. The middle and upper classes are the revolutionary element in society. The proletariat is the conservative element.”

“Taking all the round of professions and occupations, you will find that every man is the worse for being poor; and the doctor is a specially dangerous man when poor.”

“There is nothing more dangerous than the conscience of a bigot.”

“Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity.”

“As people get their opinions so largely from the newspapers they read, the corruption of the schools would not matter so much if the Press were free. But the Press is not free. As it costs at least a quarter of a million of money to establish a daily newspaper in London, the newspapers are owned by rich men. And they depend on the advertisements of other rich men. Editors and journalists who express opinions in print that are opposed to the interests of the rich are dismissed and replaced by subservient ones.”

“Well, upon my soul! You are not ashamed to stand there and confess yourself a disgusting drunkard.”

“The notion that disarmament can put a stop to war is contradicted by the nearest dogfight.”

“The art of manipulating public opinion, which is a necessary art for the democratic politician, and, like other arts, is sometimespractised with greater virtuosity by knaves than by honest men (who are apt to disdain it), has a different technique in different countries. For instance, in England we excel in whitewashing: in America they excel in tarring and feathering. We strain our nerves and stretch our consciences to avoid a scandal: Americans do the same to make one.”

“The medical profession (is) a conspiracy to hide its own shortcomings. No doubt the same may be said of all professions. They are all conspiracies against the laity... (U)ntil there is a practicable alternative to blind trust in the doctor, the truth about the doctor is so terrible that we dare not face it.”

“If there is anything I hate in a woman, it's want of character.”

“No severity of punishment deters when detection is uncertain, as it always must be.”

“A sensitive boy's humiliations may be very good fun for ordinary thick-skinned grown-ups; but to the boy himself theyareso acute, so ignominious, that he cannot confess themcannot but deny them passionately.”