Politics & Power Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

Comfort is the softest bait a society can swallow, and Maugham rigs the hook with a playwright’s sense of timing. The line doesn’t preach liberty as an abstract virtue; it treats freedom as infrastructure. Neglect it, and the whole pleasant lifestyle it quietly supports collapses. The punch is in that phrase “the ironical thing”: not righteous anger, but a dry, almost amused fatalism. Maugham is saying people don’t just make a morally dubious trade (freedom for ease); they make a stupid one.

The intent is diagnostic, not inspirational. He’s describing a recurring civic self-deception: the belief that comfort is a stable possession, and freedom an optional luxury. The subtext is about habits. Authoritarianism rarely arrives as a dramatic coup in the living room; it often comes as the steady expansion of “protections,” “exceptions,” and “temporary measures” that feel convenient in the moment. A public trained to optimize for ease becomes legible, manageable, and eventually controllable. You don’t have to be conquered if you can be administered.

Context matters. Maugham lived through two world wars and the rise of European totalitarianism, a period when many citizens accepted restrictions in exchange for promised stability, safety, or recovery. As a man who observed institutions up close (and, through his wartime service, the machinery behind them), he understood how quickly “comfort” can be weaponized as a political argument.

The line works because it refuses the usual consolation: that at least you’ll get something for surrender. Maugham’s irony is a warning that the bargain is counterfeit.