Androcles and the Lion QUOTES

1 " The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life. "

― George Bernard Shaw , Androcles and the Lion

2 " The primitive idea of justice is partly legalized revenge and partly expiation by sacrifice. It works out from both sides in the notion that two blacks make a white, and that when a wrong has been done, it should be paid for by an equivalent suffering. It seems to the Philistine majority a matter of course that this compensating suffering should be inflicted on the wrongdoer for the sake of its deterrent effect on other would-be wrongdoers; but a moment's reflection will shew that this utilitarian application corrupts the whole transaction. For example, the shedding of blood cannot be balanced by the shedding of guilty blood. Sacrificing a criminal to propitiate God for the murder of one of his righteous servants is like sacrificing a mangy sheep or an ox with the rinderpest: it calls down divine wrath instead of appeasing it. In doing it we offer God as a sacrifice the gratification of our own revenge and the protection of our own lives without cost to ourselves; and cost to ourselves is the essence of sacrifice and expiation. "

― George Bernard Shaw , Androcles and the Lion

3 " No, really: I can't fight, I never could. I can't bring myself to dislike anyone enough. "

― George Bernard Shaw , Androcles and the Lion

4 " The seriousness of throwing over hell whilst still clinging to the Atonement is obvious. If there is no punishment for sin there can be no self-forgiveness for it. If Christ paid our score, and if there is no hell and therefore no chance of our getting into trouble by forgetting the obligation, then we can be as wicked as we like with impunity inside the secular law, even from self-reproach, which becomes mere ingratitude to the Savior. On the other hand, if Christ did not pay our score, it still stands against us; and such debts make us extremely uncomfortable. The drive of evolution, which we call conscience and honor, seizes on such slips, and shames us to the dust for being so low in the scale as to be capable of them. The 'saved' thief experiences an ecstatic happiness which can never come to the honest atheist: he is tempted to steal again to repeat the glorious sensation. But if the atheist steals he has no such happiness. He is a thief and knows that he is a thief. Nothing can rub that off him. He may try to sooth his shame by some sort of restitution or equivalent act of benevolence; but that does not alter the fact that he did steal; and his conscience will not be easy until he has conquered his will to steal and changed himself into an honest man...

Now though the state of the believers in the atonement may thus be the happier, it is most certainly not more desirable from the point of view of the community. The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life. Whether Socrates got as much happiness out of life as Wesley is an unanswerable question; but a nation of Socrateses would be much safer and happier than a nation of Wesleys; and its individuals would be higher in the evolutionary scale. At all events it is in the Socratic man and not in the Wesleyan that our hope lies now.

Consequently, even if it were mentally possible for all of us to believe in the Atonement, we should have to cry off it, as we evidently have a right to do. Every man to whom salvation is offered has an inalienable natural right to say 'No, thank you: I prefer to retain my full moral responsibility: it is not good for me to be able to load a scapegoat with my sins: I should be less careful how I committed them if I knew they would cost me nothing.' "

― George Bernard Shaw , Androcles and the Lion

5 " THE QUESTION seems a hopeless one after 2000 years of resolute
adherence to the old cry of “Not this man, but Barabbas.”
Yet it is beginning to look as if Barabbas was a failure, in
spite of his strong right hand, his victories, his empires, his
millions of money, and his moralities and churches and political
constitutions. “This man” has not been a failure yet;
for nobody has ever been sane enough to try his way. But he
has had one quaint triumph. Barabbas has stolen his name
and taken his cross as a standard. There is a sort of compliment
in that. There is even a sort of loyalty in it, like that of
the brigand who breaks every law and yet claims to be a
patriotic subject of the king who makes them. We have always
had a curious feeling that though we crucified Christ
on a stick, he somehow managed to get hold of the right end
of it, and that if we were better men we might try his plan.
There have been one or two grotesque attempts at it by inadequate people, such as the Kingdom of God in Munster,
which was ended by crucifixion so much more atrocious than
the one on Calvary that the bishop who took the part of
Annas went home and died of horror. But responsible people
have never made such attempts. The moneyed, respectable,
capable world has been steadily anti-Christian and
Barabbasque since the crucifixion; and the specific doctrine
of Jesus has not in all that time been put into political or
general social practice. "

― George Bernard Shaw , Androcles and the Lion

6 " The Captain: A martyr, Lavinia, is a fool. Your death will prove nothing.
Lavinia: Then why kill me? "

― George Bernard Shaw , Androcles and the Lion

7 " I'm glad he's hungry. Not that I want him to suffer, poor chap! But then he'll enjoy eating me much more. There's a cheerful side to everything. "

― George Bernard Shaw , Androcles and the Lion