Daily Inspiration Quote by George Bernard Shaw

Shaw’s sting here is aimed at a very modern kind of self-flattery: the belief that we are driven by fierce inner forces when, most of the time, we’re driven by fatigue, habit, and social permission. “Instincts” are supposed to be primal and uncompromising, yet Shaw flips the usual romance of appetite and conviction. The real scarcity isn’t virtue; it’s vitality. We don’t lack desires, opinions, or even moral impulses. We lack the sustained energy to let any of them take command.

The phrase “make” is the tell. Instincts aren’t presented as sovereign facts of nature; they’re political actors that require backing. To be “imperious” an impulse needs a body with resources: health, confidence, a certain selfishness, maybe money, maybe time. Without that fuel, instincts remain polite suggestions, easily overridden by decorum, risk-aversion, and the endless small bargains of daily life. Shaw, the dramatist of willpower and social systems, is quietly arguing that what we call “character” is often an energy budget.

The context matters: Shaw wrote in an age of industrial exhaustion and tightening moral codes, when “self-control” was celebrated and “instinct” was either suspect or sentimentalized. His irony is that repression may not be a triumph of conscience at all; it may be simple low voltage. The line prods the reader to ask an uncomfortable question: are you principled, or just too tired to be dangerous?