"Human beings are the only animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid"
About this Quote
Shaw’s “thoroughly and cravenly” is doing the real work: the line isn’t a noble lament about human cruelty so much as a gleeful self-indictment. He could have said “I fear people.” Instead he chooses cowardice (“cravenly”) and totality (“thoroughly”), turning the confession into a scalpel. The joke lands because it reverses the usual hierarchy of fear. We’re trained to treat nature as the threat and civilization as the shelter; Shaw flips it and implies that the truly unpredictable predator is the socially sanctioned one.
The subtext is misanthropy with a conscience. “Only animals” casts humans as just another species, but one uniquely capable of rationalized violence: we don’t merely attack; we justify, organize, and outsource it. Shaw’s era makes that bite sharper. Living through industrial capitalism’s brutalities and the approach of mechanized war, he watched institutions professionalize harm while maintaining respectable manners. His fear isn’t of teeth and claws; it’s of committees, crowds, and the kind of moral certainty that turns cruelty into duty.
As a dramatist, Shaw also understands performance. Humans are the animals who can lie about what they want, including to themselves. That’s why the line feels modern: it anticipates a century of smiling public language masking private incentives, from politics to advertising. The wit isn’t a garnish; it’s a trapdoor, dropping the reader from smug superiority over “animals” into suspicion of the human stories we use to excuse ourselves.
The subtext is misanthropy with a conscience. “Only animals” casts humans as just another species, but one uniquely capable of rationalized violence: we don’t merely attack; we justify, organize, and outsource it. Shaw’s era makes that bite sharper. Living through industrial capitalism’s brutalities and the approach of mechanized war, he watched institutions professionalize harm while maintaining respectable manners. His fear isn’t of teeth and claws; it’s of committees, crowds, and the kind of moral certainty that turns cruelty into duty.
As a dramatist, Shaw also understands performance. Humans are the animals who can lie about what they want, including to themselves. That’s why the line feels modern: it anticipates a century of smiling public language masking private incentives, from politics to advertising. The wit isn’t a garnish; it’s a trapdoor, dropping the reader from smug superiority over “animals” into suspicion of the human stories we use to excuse ourselves.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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