George Bernard Shaw on Politics

"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."

"You in America should trust to that volcanic political instinct which I have divined in you."

"Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."

"Political necessities sometimes turn out to be political mistakes."

"I have defined the 100 per cent American as 99 per cent an idiot."

"All government is cruel; for nothing is so cruel as impunity."

"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."

"Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy."

"Socialists must be in favor of an aristocratic form of government. We must have the best men for the job . . . In the dictator you must have a man who has not only the power to govern but the force of character to impose himself as dictator whether you like him or not."

"Undershaft: You have made for yourself something that you call a morality or a religion or what not. It doesn't fit the facts. Well, scrap it. Scrap it and get one that does fit. That is what is wrong with the world at present. It scraps its obsolete steam engines and dynamos; but it wont scrap its old prejudices and its old moralities and its old religions and its old political constitutions. Whats the result? In machinery it does very well; but in morals and religion and politics it is working at a loss that brings it nearer bankruptcy every year."