How we cite our quotes: (Act.Line)
Quote #7
Look at poor little Jenny Hill, the Salvation lassie! she would think you were laughing at her if you asked her to stand up in the street and teach grammar or geography or mathematics or even drawing room dancing; but it never occurs to her to doubt that she can teach morals and religion. You are all alike, you respectable people. You can't tell me the bursting strain of a ten-inch gun, which is a very simple matter; but you all think you can tell me the bursting strain of a man under temptation. You daren't handle high explosives; but you're all ready to handle honesty and truth and justice and the whole duty of man, and kill one another at that game. What a country! what a world! (3.125)
Andrew gets animated during a chat with Lady B and Stephen about what Stephen is supposed to do with his life if he doesn't take over the family business. As usual, Andrew is pretty cutting with his logic, suggesting that it's a bit weird that people resist claiming knowledge or expertise in all kinds of areas, but they think nothing of claiming to be authorities on morality. Who ever put them in charge?
Quote #8
My good Machiavelli, I shall certainly write something up on the wall; only, as I shall write it in Greek, you won't be able to read it. But as to your Armorer's faith, if I take my neck out of the noose of my own morality I am not going to put it into the noose of yours. I shall sell cannons to whom I please and refuse them to whom I please. So there! (3.294)
Discussing the various mottos that generations of Undershafts had put up on the factory wall, Dolly plans his own—and tries to set out the terms of his own morality, rather than taking on Undershaft's as his own.
Quote #9
I will take an order from a good man as cheerfully as from a bad one. If you good people prefer preaching and shirking to buying my weapons and fighting the rascals, don't blame me. I can make cannons: I cannot make courage and conviction. Bah! you tire me, Euripides, with your morality mongering. (3.302)
Undershaft refuses to take moral responsibility for any evil (or good) that his cannons do—as far as he's concerned, he's just obligated to make the cannons available so that both sides can duke it out. He refuses to determine who "deserves" the cannons and who doesn't. How…fair…of him.