Life's Pleasures Quote by Brendan Behan

Behan’s irreverence isn’t teenage contrarianism; it’s a political sorting mechanism. He takes “society” - that grand, self-congratulatory word used to launder privilege into virtue - and keeps only the parts that deliver measurable relief. Roads safer. Beer stronger. Food cheaper. The elderly warmer. It reads like a pub toast that turns into a manifesto: if your institutions can’t improve daily life in ways people can feel in their bones, they don’t deserve reverence.

The wit is in the bait-and-switch. “Total irreverence” sounds like anarchic bravado, but what follows is essentially a welfare-state shopping list, delivered with working-class priorities and a dramatist’s timing. Behan sanctifies the unglamorous. He’s not impressed by moral posturing, respectability, or the performance of civilization; he’s impressed by insulation, pricing, and public safety. Even “beer stronger” is doing double duty: a joke, yes, but also an insistence that pleasure counts as policy, that austerity dressed up as virtue is still deprivation.

Context matters: Behan came out of an Ireland where nationalism, Catholic morality, and class hierarchy competed to tell people what to revere. His career - steeped in prison, politics, and the theatre - trained him to distrust piety and official narratives. The subtext is blunt: don’t ask for loyalty to “society.” Earn it. Make life less hard, especially for those already worn down by it. That’s Behan’s cynicism with a conscience.