Major Barbara (1941)

Robert Morley: Andrew Undershaft

Quotes 

• Andrew Underschaft : [to son, Stephen]  Well, is there anything you know or care for?

  Stephen Underschaft : I know the difference between right and wrong.

  Andrew Underschaft : You don't say so! What? No capacity for business? No knowledge of law? No sympathy with art? No pretention to philosophy? Only a simple knowledge of the secret that has baffled all the lawyers, muddled all the men of business, and ruined most of the artists - secret of right and wrong. Why man, you're a genius. A master of masters. A god. And at 28, too.

• Stephen Underschaft : I'm sorry sir that you force me to forget the respect due to you as my father. I'm an Englishman, I will not hear the government of my country insulted!

  Andrew Underschaft : The government of your country! I am the government of your country! I and Lazarus. Do you suppose that you and half a dozen amateurs like you, sitting in a row in that foolish gavel shop, can govern a country like England? Be off with you my boy, and play with your historic parties, and leading articles, and burning questions, and the rest of your toys. And in return, you shall have the support and applause of my newspapers, and the delight of imagining that you're a great statesman.

• Andrew Underschaft : When you vote, you only change the names of the cabinet. When you shoot, you pull down governments, inaugurate new epochs, abolish old orders, and set up new.

• Andrew Underschaft : Stephen, I've found your profession for you. You're a born journalist. We must get you a job at The Times.

• Andrew Underschaft : [to Barbara]  You've learned something, my dear. It always feels at first as if you've lost something.

• Andrew Underschaft : The first Underschaft wrote: if God gave man the hand, let not man withhold the sword. The second wrote: all have the right to fight, none have the right to judge. The third wrote up: to man the heaven, to heaven the victory. The fourth had no literary turn, so he didn't write up anything, but he sold cannons to Napoleon under the nose of George III. The fifth wrote up: peace shall not prevail, save with a sword in her hand. But the sixth, my master, was best of all. He wrote up: nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it's not done! After that, there was nothing left for me to say, so I wrote up simply: unashamed.

• Andrew Underschaft : Poverty and slavery have stood up for centuries to your sermons and leading articles. They won't stand up to my machine guns. Don't preach at them. Don't reason with them. Kill them!

• Andrew Underschaft : [speaking of Stephen]  He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

• Andrew Underschaft : Whatever can blow man up, can blow society up. The history of the world is the history of those who had courage to embrace that truth.

• Andrew Underschaft : Oh, very well. Have it your own way. You know nothing and you think you know everything. That points clearly to a political career.