What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
Idiots are always in favour of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favour of equality.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that those with lesser intellect support income inequality because it benefits them, while truly great individuals advocate for equality.
George Bernard Shaw highlights the notion that individuals of lower intellect often support income inequality as it provides them a chance to rise above others, while those who are genuinely great, in terms of character and ability, champion the cause of equality. This reflects a broader philosophical stance on the nature of greatness and the motivations behind people's beliefs about socioeconomic structures.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about economic policies, one might reference Shaw's quote to illustrate differing perspectives on income distribution.
More from George Bernard Shaw
All quotes βMarriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.
Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
Treat a friend as a person who may someday become your enemy; an enemy as a person who may someday become your friend.
The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
Similar quotes
I know that to personalize the Earth System as Gaia, as I have often done and continue to do in this book, irritates the scientifically correct, but I am unrepentant because metaphors are more than ever needed for a widespread comprehension of the true nature of the Earth and an understanding of the lethal dangers that lie ahead.
If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.
The story of each stone leads back to a mountain.
Where is it I've read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he'd only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once. Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!
This freedom, this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air, usable as earth.
They devour each other and cannot even digest themselves.