Key quotations

Mr Birling

• ‘a hard-headed, practical man of business’ (Mr Birling, Act 1): he is proud of caring only about profit.
• ‘unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable’ (Mr Birling, Act 1): dramatic irony about the Titanic makes him look foolish.
• ‘a man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own’ (Mr Birling, Act 1): the selfish view Priestley attacks.
• ‘The famous younger generation who know it all’ (Mr Birling, Act 3): he has learnt nothing.

Mrs Birling

• ‘a rather cold woman and her husband's social superior’ (stage direction, Act 1).
• ‘As if a girl of that sort would ever refuse money!’ (Mrs Birling, Act 2): class prejudice.
• ‘Go and look for the father of the child. It's his responsibility’ (Mrs Birling, Act 2): the trap she sets for her own son.

Sheila

• ‘these girls aren't cheap labour – they're people’ (Sheila, Act 1): she sees workers as human.
• ‘I'll never, never do it again to anybody’ (Sheila, Act 1): she accepts her guilt at once.
• ‘It frightens me the way you talk’ (Sheila, Act 3): she has changed; her parents haven't.

Eric

• ‘Why shouldn't they try for higher wages?’ (Eric, Act 1): his sense of fairness.
• ‘you're not the kind of father a chap could go to’ (Eric, Act 3): the family's failure.
• ‘the fact remains that I did what I did’ (Eric, Act 3): he takes responsibility.

Gerald

• ‘I didn't feel about her as she felt about me’ (Gerald, Act 2): he used Daisy.
• ‘Everything's all right now, Sheila’ (Gerald, Act 3): he hasn't changed.

• ‘It's better to ask for the earth than to take it’ (the Inspector, Act 1): he turns Mr Birling's words against him.
• ‘Public men, Mr Birling, have responsibilities as well as privileges’ (the Inspector, Act 2): power brings duties.
• ‘We are members of one body’ (the Inspector, Act 3): society is like one living thing.
• ‘We are responsible for each other’ (the Inspector, Act 3): the play's message.
• ‘in fire and blood and anguish’ (the Inspector, Act 3): a warning of war, which came true.