George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

Summary

Portrait of George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw Preface to Androcles and the Lion… (1912)

The only people who cling to the lazy delusion that it is possible to find a just distribution that will work automatically are those who postulate some revolutionary change like land nationalization, which by itself would obviously only force into greater urgency the problem of how to distribute the product of the land among all the individuals in the community.
Source: Wikisource

Portrait of George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw Preface to Androcles and the Lion… (1912)

We all strive towards an independent income. We all know as well as Jesus did that if we have to take thought for the morrow as to whether there shall be anything to eat or drink it will be impossible for us to think of nobler things, or live a higher life than that of a mole, whose life is from beginning to end a frenzied pursuit of food. Until the community is organized in such a way that the fear of bodily want is forgotten as completely as the fear of wolves already is in civilized capitals, we shall never have a decent social life.
Source: Wikisource

Portrait of George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw Preface to Androcles and the Lion… (1912)

Even if we provided work for him instead of basing, as we do, our whole industrial system on successive competitive waves of overwork with their ensuing troughs of unemployment, we should still sternly deny him the alternative of not doing it; for the result must be that he will become poor and make his children poor if he has any; and poor people are cancers in the commonwealth, costing far more than if they were handsomely pensioned off as incurables. Jesus had more sense than to propose anything of the sort.
Source: Wikisource

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