Politics & Power Quote by George Bernard Shaw

Shaw’s jab lands because it treats political apathy not as a moral failing but as a consumer choice, a kind of middle-class anesthesia. The “Englishman” here isn’t a person so much as a type: comfortable enough to outsource anxiety to the daily pleasures of modern life. The motor car, still a relatively new symbol of status and freedom in Shaw’s era, becomes a portable excuse. Why wrestle with budgets, labor disputes, Irish Home Rule, or the slow grind of reform when you can buy mobility, speed, and the illusion of control?

The line works as Shaw at peak surgical cynicism: it’s phrased like a question, but it’s really a verdict. It also reverses the patriotic stereotype. Instead of the dutiful citizen, we get the contented spectator. Politics is framed as something you only “give your mind to” when life stops being entertaining or comfortable; civic engagement becomes a luxury good you purchase only after other luxuries fail.

Context matters: Shaw wrote in a Britain where industrial capitalism had produced both mass poverty and a swelling, self-satisfied bourgeoisie. As a Fabian socialist, he distrusted sentimental calls to duty and preferred to expose the incentives beneath behavior. The motor car isn’t just a vehicle; it’s a metaphor for privatized escape. If you can drive away from the consequences, why demand the system change?

Under the wit is a warning that still stings: when comfort becomes the dominant political strategy, democracy turns into background noise - until the engine fails.