Maxims for Revolutionists

Bernard Shaw turns familiar moral advice upside down in these brief, pointed sayings. Maxims for Revolutionists groups its aphorisms under headings such as royalty, democracy, education, property and religion. The opening challenges the assumption that other people share our tastes, then questions the public's devotion to rulers and national idols. Liberty brings responsibility, while conventional schooling receives a series of sharp rebukes.

The later passages connect private habits with wider social arrangements. Shaw considers obedience and disobedience, the pursuit of happiness, the burdens of wealth and the gentleman who consumes without producing. His method is to compress an argument into a sentence that unsettles an accepted belief, often through irony or an unexpected comparison. Readers interested in political thought and social satire will find a compact collection for close reading, with each heading offering another occasion to examine the values behind everyday judgments.