quotes by Polemicist Quotes

“That is the injustice of a woman's lot. A woman has to bring up her children; and that means to restrain them, to deny them things they want, to set them tasks, to punish them when they do wrong, to do all the unpleasant things. And then the father, who has nothing to do but pet them and spoil them, comes in when all her work is done and steals their affection from her.”

“I have never admitted the right of an elderly author to alter the work of a young author, even when the young author happens to be his former self.”

“You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?”

“Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes; our power wielded by cowards and weaklings; and our honour false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons”

“If I refuse to allow my leg to be amputated, its mortification and my death may prove that I was wrong; but if I let the leg go, nobody can ever prove that it would not have mortified had I been obstinate. Operation is therefore the safe side for the surgeon as well as the lucrative side.”

“To be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer.”

“Let a short Act of Parliament be passed, placing all street musicians outside the protection of the law, so that any citizenmay assail them with stones, sticks, knives, pistols or bombs without incurring any penalties.”

“Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.”

“Oh, come! That boot is on the other leg. Why should you call me to account for eating decently? If I battened on the scorched corpses of animals, you might well ask me why I did that”

“A man who desires to get married should know everything or nothing.”

“I also made it quite clear that Socialism means equality of income or nothing, and that under socialism you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly feed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you like it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live you would have to live well.”

“I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.”

“You see things and you say, 'Why?'. But I dream things and I say, 'Why not?'.”

“I occasionally swank a little because people like it; a modest man is such a nuisance.”

“The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no thirdclass carriages, and one soul is as good as another.”

“As 99 per cent of English authors and 100 per cent of American ones [authors] are just such imbeciles, managers and publishers make a practice of asking for every right the author possesses.”

“Leisure may be defined as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes, labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation.”

“There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle.”

“Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.”

“My heart, my heart, be whole and free: Love is thine only enemy.”

“Nature holds no brief for the human experiment; it must stand or fall by its results.”

“It is nearly 50 years since I was assured by a conclave of doctors that if I did not eat meat I should die of starvation.”

“Journalists are too poorly paid in this country to know anything that is fit for publication.”

“Deep knowledge is not knowledge of the thing itself, but knowledge of a thing like the thing. Then, you gain not one knowledge, but two knowledges. Of the thing. And of the original thing with is like the thing. Which is the barbarism of the privileged class.”

“You will think less of the art, when you know the artist”

“Get married, but never to a man who is home all day.”

“An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.”

“Literature is like any other trade; you will never sell anything unless you go to the right shop.”

“A revolutionist is one who desires to discard the existing social order and try another.”

“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.”

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

“There are no perfectly honorable men; but every true man has one main point of honor and a few minor ones.”

“When a prisoner sees the door of his dungeon open, he dashes for it without stopping to think where he shall get his dinner outside.”

“Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal.”

“Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion. When they refuse to be governed by law or persuasion, they have to be governed by force or fraud, or both.”

“No king on earth is as safe in his job as a Trade Union official. There is only one thing that can get him sacked; and that is drink. Not even that, as long as he doesn't actually fall down.”

“I do not know what I think until I write it.”

“I can't control what life did to me, but I can control how I react. Therein lies the difference.”

“Fear is choosing the safe course”

“A critic recently described me, with deadly acuteness, as having 'a kindly dislike of my fellow-creatures.' Perhaps dread would have been nearer the mark than dislike; for man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.”

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

“A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.”

“Revolutionary moments attract those who are not good enough for established institutions as well as those who are too good for them.”

“We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!”

“Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis.”

“It's so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.”

“The most intolerable pain is produced by prolonging the keenest pleasure.”

“The greatest thing in life is to die young - but delay it as long as possible.”

“You cannot be a hero without being a coward.”

“In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.”