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  ...it must be spiritual power.
CUSINS. I think all power is spiritual: these cannons will not go off by themselves. I have tried to make spiritual power by teaching Greek. But the world can never be really touched by a dead language and a dead civilization. The people must have power; and the people cannot have Greek. Now the power that is made here can be wielded by all men.
BARBARA. Power to burn women's houses down and kill their sons and tear their husbands to pieces.
CUSINS. You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.   This power which only tears men's bodies to pieces has never been so horribly abused as the intellectual power, the imaginative power, the poetic, religious power that can enslave men's souls. As a teacher of Greek I gave the intellectual man weapons against the common man. I now want to give the common man weapons against the intellectual man. I love the common people. I want to arm them against the lawyer, the doctor, the priest, the literary man, the professor, the artist, and the...   Shaw, George Bernard

Excerpt from Major Barbara · This quote is about power · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.

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