Daily Inspiration Quote by George Bernard Shaw

Shaw’s compliment lands like a slap because it weaponizes two virtues Victorian and Edwardian society loved to award itself: “common sense” and “good taste.” In polite culture, those phrases function as social deodorant. They sanitize prejudice, complacency, and fear of embarrassment, dressing them up as maturity. Shaw’s dash - “meaning thereby” - is the tell: he’s not defining a person so much as exposing a code. When the respectable call someone sensible and tasteful, Shaw suggests, they’re often praising his ability to stay inside the lines, to never risk the shock of a new idea or the disgrace of an unpopular stand.

The intent is classic Shaw: puncture bourgeois self-regard and show how aesthetic judgment becomes moral policing. “Good taste” isn’t neutral; it’s a mechanism for enforcing class norms, deciding which art, politics, and even emotions are acceptable. “Common sense” plays the same role in civic life, substituting inherited opinion for argument. By pairing the two, Shaw implies that conformity can masquerade as both rationality and refinement.

The subtext sharpens into an accusation: a society that rewards “taste” and “sense” may actually be selecting for cowardice. “Originality” is risky because it invites ridicule; “moral courage” is risky because it invites punishment. Shaw, a dramatist who thrived on controversy and reforms, knew how quickly audiences applaud daring onstage while demanding safety off it. The line isn’t anti-sense or anti-taste; it’s anti-credential - a warning that what passes for virtue can be nothing more than an elegant fear of standing alone.