“It is not necessary to replace a guillotined criminal: it is necessary to replace a guillotined social system.”

—  George Bernard Shaw

#65
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is not necessary to replace a guillotined criminal: it is necessary to replace a guillotined social system." by George Bernard Shaw?
George Bernard Shaw photo
George Bernard Shaw413
Irish playwright 1856–1950

Related quotes

Auguste Rodin photo

“No sudden inspiration can replace the long years of arduous labor necessary to train the eye to observe, the hand to reproduce.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

RODIN, AUGUSTE. L'Art. Entretiens réunis par Paul Gsell, 1911

Kenneth N. Waltz photo

“Once socialism replaces capitalism, reason will determine the policies of states.”

Kenneth N. Waltz book Man, the State, and War

Source: Man, the State, and War (1959), Chapter V, Some Implications Of The Second Image, p. 150

Guy Debord photo

“Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.”

Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)

Source: Society of the Spectacle (1967), Ch. 8, sct. 207 (confer Comte de Lautréamont, Poésies II, 1870).

Richard Stallman photo

“We want to replace proprietary software, with its unjust social system with Free Software and its ethical social system. And so we develop free replacements for proprietary software, and other free programs whenever we get an idea, so that the world can live in freedom. The part that uses computers, at least, in that one area of life. Because winning and maintaining freedom in general is a much bigger, much broader and harder activity, but this is one part of it.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

2000s, What is free software? (2006)

“[if the automobile is replaced by public trans port] the social structure of cities will revert to the ecological pattern of 1880.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1970s, Toward a General Social Science, 1974, p. 257 as cited in D.S. Houghton, B.J. Shaw (1982) "The city in an era of restricted car usage: Some further observations and policy responses". In: Geoforum. Vol 13, Issue 1, p. 19–25,

Aung San Suu Kyi photo

“In a revolutionary movement there is always the danger that political exigencies might obscure, or even nullify, essential spiritual aims. A firm insistence on the inviolability and primacy of such aims is not mere idealism but a necessary safeguard against an Animal Farm syndrome where the new order after its first flush of enthusiastic reforms takes on the murky colours of the very system it has replaced.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

In Quest of Democracy (1991)

Benjamin Creme photo

“Capitalism without socialism is like a great shark in the waters that will eat up everything in sight, and has no group sense or social responsibility. We need to take the best of both systems and bring them together…. a fusion of the best aspects of both. Both are necessary. The sense of justice, brotherhood and social caring… is necessary for the West, but the sense of freedom of the individual in movement, expression and thought is necessary in the East. That is something which will… gradually become the norm in Europe and eventually throughout the world…. not capitalism or communism, but social democracy or democratic socialism with full participation of all peoples in their own government.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Maitreya's Mission Vol. II (1993)

Bernard Harcourt photo

“The doctrine of laissez-faire in the mid-nineteenth century essentially allowed three functions for the government: first, maintaining the external defense of the country; second, providing for the internal order and security of persons; and third, possibly, providing for minimal public amenities. … Criminalization and punishment became, undisputedly, the most legitimate and competent task of the government. There, for sure, government intervention was proper, necessary, legitimate, and competent. There, natural orderliness had to be replaced by governmental ordering.”

Bernard Harcourt (1963) American academic

Source: The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order (2011), p. 37

“Who is that?”
“Your replacement.”
“You replaced me with a shaved poodle?”
“He's got mad skills.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

Alice Meynell photo

“It is easy to replace man, and it will take no great time, where Nature has lapsed, to replace Nature.”

Alice Meynell (1847–1922) English publisher, editor, writer, poet, activist

"The Colour of Life" in The Colour of Life and Other Essays on Things Seen and Heard (London: John Lane, 1896), p. 4.

Related topics