# Quote — George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara

> Cusins: Call you poverty a crime?
>
> Undershaft: The worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues beside it: all the other dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing: a murder here and a theft there, a blow now and a curse then: what do they matter? they are only the accidents and illnesses of life: there are not fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed people. They poison us morally and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty.

- Author: [George Bernard Shaw](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw.md)
- Book: [Major Barbara](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw/major-barbara.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw#Major_Barbara_(1905)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Topics: [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md), [crime](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/crime.md)
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw/major-barbara/cusins-call-you

## More from this book

> You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw/major-barbara/you-have-learnt.md)

Topics: [science](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science.md)

> You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw/major-barbara/you-cannot-have.md)

Topics: [power](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power.md), [morality](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/morality.md)

> It is quite useless to declare that all men are born free if you deny that they are born good. Guarantee a man's goodness and his liberty will take care of itself. To guarantee his freedom on condition that you approve of his moral character is formally to abolish all freedom whatsoever, as every man's liberty is at the mercy of a moral indictment which any fool can trump up against everyone who violates custom, whether as a prophet or as a rascal.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw/major-barbara/it-is-quite.md)

Topics: [morality](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/morality.md), [freedom](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom.md)