George Bernard Shaw

The government of your country! I am the government of your country! I and Lazarus. Do you suppose that you and half a dozen amateurs like you, sitting in a row in that foolish gavel shop, can govern a country like England? Be off with you my boy, and play with your historic parties, and leading articles, and burning questions, and the rest of your toys. And in return, you shall have the support and applause of my newspapers, and the delight of imagining that you're a great statesman.

When you vote, you only change the names of the cabinet. When you shoot, you pull down governments, inaugurate new epochs, abolish old orders, and set up new.

You don't say so! What? No capacity for business? No knowledge of law? No sympathy with art? No pretention to philosophy? Only a simple knowledge of the secret that has baffled all the lawyers, muddled all the men of business, and ruined most of the artists - secret of right and wrong. Why man, you're a genius. A master of masters. A god. And at 28, too.

Stephen, I've found your profession for you. You're a born journalist. We must get you a job at The Times.

You've learned something, my dear. It always feels at first as if you've lost something.

The fist Underschaft wrote: if God gave man the hand, let not man withhold the sword. The second wrote: all have the right to fight, none have the right to judge. The third wrote up: to man the heaven, to heaven the victory. The fourth had no literary turn, so he didn't write up anything, but he sold cannons to Napoleon under the nose of George III. The fifth wrote up: peace shall not prevail, save with a sword in her hand. But the sixth, my master, was best of all. He wrote up: nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it's not done! After that, there was nothing left for me to say, so I wrote up simply: unashamed.

Poverty and slavery have stood up for centuries to your sermons and leading articles. They won't stand up to my machine guns. Don't preach at them. Don't reason with them. Kill them!

He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

Whatever can blow man up, can blow society up. The history of the world is the history of those who had courage to embrace that truth.

Oh, very well. Have it your own way. You know nothing and you think you know everything. That points clearly to a political career.

You might marry you know? Youre not bad-looking; it's quite a pleasure to look at you sometimes-not now, of course, because youre crying and looking as ugly as the very devil; but when youre all right and quite yourself, youre what I should call attractive. That is, to the people in the marrying line, you understand. You go to bed and have a good nice rest; and then get up and look at yourself in the glass; and you wont feel so cheap.

Yes, you squashed cabbage leaf, you disgrace to the noble architecture of these columns, you incarnate insult to the English language, I could pass you off as the Queen of Sheba!

Now listen to me, Eliza. You're going to live here for six months and learn to speak beautifully like a lady in a florist shop. If you're good and do whatever you're told, you shall sleep in a proper bedroom, have lots to eat and money to buy chocolates and take rides in taxis. If you're naughty and idle, you shall sleep in the back kitchen among the black beetles and be walloped by Mrs. Pearce with a broomstick. At the end of six months you shall go to Buckingham Palace in a carriage, beautifully dressed. If the King finds out you're not a lady, you will be taken by the guards to the Tower of London where your head will be cut off as a warning to other presumptuous flower girls. But, if you are not found out, you will receive a present of seven and sixpence to start life with as a lady in a shop. If you refuse this offer you will be a most ungrateful and wicked girl and the angels will weep for you.

Heaven help the master who is judged by his disciples.