I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.

Brendan Behan’s remark belongs to his public persona in the late 1950s–early 1960s, when he was widely interviewed and quoted as a combative, anti-bourgeois Irish writer with republican sympathies. The line is typically presented as an aphorism from his talk and interview material rather than from a single play or novel, reflecting his skepticism toward “society” as an abstract moral authority. It fits the period when Behan, often speaking off-the-cuff, contrasted official respectability with concrete improvements in ordinary people’s lives—especially the welfare of the poor and elderly—using comic exaggeration (beer stronger) to sharpen the point.

Behan’s remark distills a characteristically Irish, working-class skepticism toward “society” understood as polite institutions, moral posturing, and social hierarchy. His irreverence is not nihilistic: he exempts the practical, humane functions of collective life—public safety, affordable necessities, and care for the elderly. The deliberately earthy benchmarks (“beer stronger,” “food cheaper”) mock lofty rhetoric and insist that social arrangements justify themselves by tangible improvements in ordinary people’s lives. In effect, Behan frames politics and civic order as legitimate only insofar as they deliver material well-being and comfort, especially for the vulnerable, rather than demanding deference or conformity.