Politics & Power Quote by J.B. Priestley

A neat little linguistic pratfall, and also a sly bit of cultural criticism: Priestley pretends he’s barely bilingual in America, then uses his “two words” to stage a perfect reversal. The joke lands because it flatters his pose as the bemused outsider while quietly asserting authority. He doesn’t need a dictionary of slang to diagnose a national temperament; two pebbles of language are enough to start an avalanche.

The line works on two tracks. On the surface it’s wordplay: “swell” (optimistic, boosterish) gets downgraded; “lousy” (complaint, grit) gets upgraded. Underneath, Priestley is taking a swipe at American cheerfulness as a kind of enforced marketing copy. “Swell” isn’t just a word, it’s a social instruction: be upbeat, be agreeable, don’t interrogate the machinery. By calling it “lousy,” he’s puncturing the shiny surface. Then he crowns “lousy” as “swell,” praising the honesty of dissatisfaction, the plainspoken permission to say a thing isn’t working.

Context matters: Priestley’s career sits amid mass advertising, wartime propaganda, and the rise of transatlantic “modern” culture. A British writer watching American slang spread like a cultural export would notice how vocabulary carries ideology. The quip is anti-boosterism disguised as a shrug, a Priestley signature: genial delivery, sharpened blade. Even the faux-naive “I know only…” is strategic misdirection, letting him critique America without sounding doctrinaire. He laughs first so he gets to land the punch.