Project Gutenberg's Maxims for Revolutionists, by George Bernard Shaw

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Title: Maxims for Revolutionists

Author: George Bernard Shaw

Release Date: July 22, 2008 [EBook #26107]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAXIMS FOR REVOLUTIONISTS ***

Produced by Russell Bell

Maxims for Revolutionists

by

George Bernard Shaw

(1856-1950)

THE GOLDEN RULE

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their
tastes may not be the same.

Never resist temptation: prove all things: hold fast that which is good.

Do not love your neighbor as yourself. If you are on good terms with
yourself it is an impertinence: if on bad, an injury.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

IDOLATRY

The art of government is the organization of idolatry.

The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols;
the democracy, of idolaters.

The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the
national idols.

The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone: the civilized man to
idols of flesh and blood.

A limited monarchy is a device for combining the inertia of a wooden
idol with the credibility of a flesh and blood one.

When the wooden idol does not answer the peasant's prayer, he beats it:
when the flesh and blood idol does not satisfy the civilized man, he
cuts its head off.

He who slays a king and he who dies for him are alike idolaters.

ROYALTY

Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination. When the
process is interrupted by adversity at a critical age, as in the case of
Charles II, the subject becomes sane and never completely recovers his
kingliness.

The Court is the servant's hall of the sovereign.

Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.

The flunkeyism propagated by the throne is the price we pay for its
political convenience.

DEMOCRACY

If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a foot-rule can measure
a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the
political problem remains unsolved.

Democracy substitutes election b