"It is no use speaking in soft, gentle tones if everyone else is shouting"
About this Quote
Politeness can be a moral pose, Priestley implies, but it is also a strategy that fails the minute the room turns into a brawl. "Soft, gentle tones" are coded as civility, reason, maybe even English decorum: the kind of restraint that flatters itself as superior. Yet Priestley punctures that self-image with a blunt practical verdict: "no use". If everyone else is shouting, gentleness stops reading as virtue and starts reading as surrender, or worse, irrelevance.
The line works because it refuses the comforting myth that calm speech automatically wins. It treats public argument as an ecosystem: volume, urgency, and repetition shape what gets heard, not just what is true. Subtextually, he's warning that decency without force is easily outcompeted by demagogues, tabloids, war fever, or any mass mood that rewards heat over light. There's a quiet provocation here for writers and citizens alike: if you want to defend humane values, you may have to risk sounding less humane.
Priestley lived through two world wars and the rise of mass broadcasting, when politics increasingly moved from pamphlet logic to microphone drama. His own BBC "Postscripts" made him a practitioner of this lesson: persuasion in a crowded media environment requires projection. The sentence is short, almost shouted itself, performing the very pivot it recommends. It's not an argument for cruelty; it's an argument against mistaking softness for effectiveness when the stakes are loud.
The line works because it refuses the comforting myth that calm speech automatically wins. It treats public argument as an ecosystem: volume, urgency, and repetition shape what gets heard, not just what is true. Subtextually, he's warning that decency without force is easily outcompeted by demagogues, tabloids, war fever, or any mass mood that rewards heat over light. There's a quiet provocation here for writers and citizens alike: if you want to defend humane values, you may have to risk sounding less humane.
Priestley lived through two world wars and the rise of mass broadcasting, when politics increasingly moved from pamphlet logic to microphone drama. His own BBC "Postscripts" made him a practitioner of this lesson: persuasion in a crowded media environment requires projection. The sentence is short, almost shouted itself, performing the very pivot it recommends. It's not an argument for cruelty; it's an argument against mistaking softness for effectiveness when the stakes are loud.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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