"Of a sane man there can be only one definition. He is a man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head."
On What's Wrong with the World:
I maintain, therefore, that the common sociological method is quite useless: that of first dissecting abject poverty or cataloguing prostitution. We all dislike abject poverty; but it might be another business if we began to discuss independent and dignified poverty. We all disapprove of prostitution; but we do not all approve of purity. The only way to discuss the social evil is to get at once to the social ideal. We can all see the national madness; but what is national sanity? I have called this book "What Is Wrong with the World?" and the upshot of the title can be easily and clearly stated. What is wrong is that we do not ask what is right.
On the difference between the radical left and the tory right:
And now, as this book is drawing to a close, I will whisper in the reader's ear a horrible suspicion that has sometimes haunted me: the suspicion that Hudge and Gudge are secretly in partnership. That the quarrel they keep up in public is very much of a put-up job, and that the way in which they perpetually play into each other's hands is not an everlasting coincidence. Gudge, the plutocrat, wants an anarchic industrialism; Hudge, the idealist, provides him with lyric praises of anarchy. Gudge wants women-workers because they are cheaper; Hudge calls the woman's work "freedom to live her own life." Gudge wants steady and obedient workmen, Hudge preaches teetotalism-- to workmen, not to Gudge--Gudge wants a tame and timid population who will never take arms against tyranny; Hudge proves from Tolstoi that nobody must take arms against anything. Gudge is naturally a healthy and well-washed gentleman; Hudge earnestly preaches the perfection of Gudge's washing to people who can't practice it. Above all, Gudge rules by a coarse and cruel system of sacking and sweating and bi-sexual toil which is totally inconsistent with the free family and which is bound to destroy it; therefore Hudge, stretching out his arms to the universe with a prophetic smile, tells us that the family is something that we shall soon gloriously outgrow.
From What's Wrong with the World
On Socialism:
But there can be little doubt, I think, that if some form of Collectivism is imposed upon England it will be imposed, as everything else has been, by an instructed political class upon a people partly apathetic and partly hypnotized. The aristocracy will be as ready to "administer" Collectivism as they were to administer Puritanism or Manchesterism; in some ways such a centralized political power is necessarily attractive to them. It will not be so hard as some innocent Socialists seem to suppose to induce the Honorable Tomnoddy to take over the milk supply as well as the stamp supply--at an increased salary. Mr. Bernard Shaw has remarked that rich men are better than poor men on parish councils because they are free from "financial timidity." Now, the English ruling class is quite free from financial timidity. The Duke of Sussex will be quite ready to be Administrator of Sussex at the same screw. Sir William Harcourt, that typical aristocrat, put it quite correctly. "We" (that is, the aristocracy) "are all Socialists now."
But this is not the essential note on which I desire to end. My main contention is that, whether necessary or not, both Industrialism and Collectivism have been accepted as necessities-- not as naked ideals or desires. Nobody liked the Manchester School; it was endured as the only way of producing wealth. Nobody likes the Marxian school; it is endured as the only way of preventing poverty. Nobody's real heart is in the idea of preventing a free man from owning his own farm, or an old woman from cultivating her own garden, any more than anybody's real heart was in the heartless battle of the machines. The purpose of this chapter is sufficiently served in indicating that this proposal also is a pis aller, a desperate second best-- like teetotalism. I do not propose to prove here that Socialism is a poison; it is enough if I maintain that it is a medicine and not a wine.
The idea of private property universal but private, the idea of families free but still families, of domesticity democratic but still domestic, of one man one house--this remains the real vision and magnet of mankind. The world may accept something more official and general, less human and intimate. But the world will be like a broken-hearted woman who makes a humdrum marriage because she may not make a happy one; Socialism may be the world's deliverance. but it is not the world's desire.
On Nietzsche and Popular novels:
In one sense, at any rate, it is more valuable to read bad literature than good literature. Good literature may tell us the mind of one man; but bad literature may tell us the mind of many men. A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. It does much more than that, it tells us the truth about its readers; and, oddly enough, it tells us this all the more the more cynical and immoral be the motive of its manufacture. The more dishonest a book is as a book the more honest it is as a public document. A sincere novel exhibits the simplicity of one particular man; an insincere novel exhibits the simplicity of mankind. The pedantic decisions and definable readjustments of man may be found in scrolls and statute books and scriptures; but men's basic assumptions and everlasting energies are to be found in penny dreadfuls and halfpenny novelettes. Thus a man, like many men of real culture in our day, might learn from good literature nothing except the power to appreciate good literature. But from bad literature he might learn to govern empires and look over the map of mankind.
There is one rather interesting example of this state of things in which the weaker literature is really the stronger and the stronger the weaker. It is the case
of what may be called, for the sake of an approximate description, the literature of aristocracy; or, if you prefer the description, the literature of
snobbishness. Now if any one wishes to find a really effective and comprehensible and permanent case for aristocracy well and sincerely stated, let him
read, not the modern philosophical conservatives, not even Nietzsche, let him read the Bow Bells Novelettes. Of the case of Nietzsche I am confessedly
more doubtful. Nietzsche and the Bow Bells Novelettes have both obviously the same fundamental character; they both worship the tall man with curling
moustaches and herculean bodily power, and they both worship him in a manner which is somewhat feminine and hysterical. Even here, however, the
Novelette easily maintains its philosophical superiority, because it does attribute to the strong man those virtues which do commonly belong to him, such
virtues as laziness and kindliness and a rather reckless benevolence, and a great dislike of hurting the weak. Nietzsche, on the other hand, attributes to the
strong man that scorn against weakness which only exists among invalids. It is not, however, of the secondary merits of the great German philosopher,
but of the primary merits of the Bow Bells Novelettes, that it is my present affair to speak. The picture of aristocracy in the popular sentimental novelette
seems to me very satisfactory as a permanent political and philosophical guide. It may be inaccurate about details such as the title by which a baronet is
addressed or the width of a mountain chasm which a baronet can conveniently leap, but it is not a bad description of the general idea and intention of
aristocracy as they exist in human affairs. The essential dream of aristocracy is magnificence and valour; and if the Family Herald Supplement sometimes
distorts or exaggerates these things, at least, it does not fall short in them. It never errs by making the mountain chasm too narrow or the title of the
baronet insufficiently impressive. But above this sane reliable old literature of snobbishness there has arisen in our time another kind of literature of
snobbishness which, with its much higher pretensions, seems to me worthy of very much less respect. Incidentally (if that matters), it is much better
literature. But it is immeasurably worse philosophy, immeasurably worse ethics and politics, immeasurably worse vital rendering of aristocracy and
humanity as they really are. From such books as those of which I wish now to speak we can discover what a clever man can do with the idea of
aristocracy. But from the Family Herald Supplement literature we can learn what the idea of aristocracy can do with a man who is not clever. And when
we know that we know English history.
On political, maritime, and argumentative honor:
"Well!" cried Julian Archer, slapping his swordhilt with that air of answering for everybody that was so hearty and refreshing. "It's been a great day and the world will hear of it. The people round here will find we've really got to work.
This is the sort of thing that will hunt out Braintree and all his rabble of ragamuffins and make them run like rats."
"Sir Julian," cried the King-at-arms sternly, "I think you have read your books of venery very wrongly. You do not seem to know that we are back in braver and better days and have left behind the time when gentlemen could swagger about hunting vermin. Ours is the spirit of the ages when royal beasts could turn to bay and slay the hunters; the great boar and the royal stag. We are of the world that could respect its enemies; yes, even when they were beasts. I know John Braintree; and there never was a braver man walking this world. Shall we fight for our faith and sneer at him because he fights for his? Go and kill him if you dare; but if he should kill you, you will be as much honored in your death as you are now dishonored by your tongue."
-The Return of Don Quixote
The decay of society is praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms.
-On George Bernard Shaw
"The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs."
"Bigotry is an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition."
"Our materialistic masters could, and probably will, put Birth Control into an immediate practical programme while we are all discussing
the dreadful danger of somebody else putting it into a distant Utopia."
"The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense."
"Though the academic authorities are actually proud of conducting everything by means of Examinations, they seldom indulge
in what religious people used to descibe as Self-Examination. The consequence is that the modern State has educated its citizens
in a series of ephemeral fads."
"Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is
allowed to mention it."
"Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol,
or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice."
"Modern broad-mindedness benefits the rich; and benefits nobody else."
"When such a critic says, for instance, that faith kept the world in darkness until doubt led to enlightenment, he is himself taking things on
faith, things that he has never been sufficiently enlightened to doubt. That exceedingly crude simplification of human history is what he has
been taught, and he believes it because he has been taught. I do not blame him for that; I merely remark that he is an unconscious example of
everything that he reviles." -Illustrated London News, 2/13/1926
"Poets and such persons talk about the public as if it were some enormous and abnormal monster-a huge hybrid between the cow they milk and the dragon that drinks their blood." 7/31/26