Daily Inspiration Quote by George Bernard Shaw

Shaw lands this line like a well-aimed insult in a drawing room: elegant, funny, and meant to sting. He’s not merely doubting religion; he’s mocking a common defense of belief that still shows up today in self-help spirituality and “if it works for you” relativism. Happiness, he implies, is a terrible yardstick for truth. Plenty of false things feel wonderful. That’s the trap.

The comparison is calculatedly unfair in the way good satire often is. Shaw pairs “believer” with “drunken man,” borrowing the moral and social baggage of intoxication to reframe faith as a kind of chosen impairment: a mood-altering comfort purchased at the price of clear perception. It’s a provocation, not a syllogism. He wants the skeptic to feel morally braced (sober, awake, adult) and the believer to feel exposed (pleased, yes, but at what cost?).

The subtext is also a jab at Victorian and Edwardian respectability, where religion functioned as both personal balm and social credential. Shaw, a contrarian dramatist with socialist sympathies and a taste for heresy, enjoyed puncturing the idea that piety automatically equals virtue. His theater thrives on that reversal: the “serious” people are often performing seriousness.

What makes the line work is its cruelty disguised as common sense. It doesn’t argue believers into doubt; it shames the audience out of mistaking comfort for correctness. The laugh it gets is the point - and the weapon.