George Bernard Shaw Quotes

» I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

» The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.

» Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

» Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

» England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

» Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.

» Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

» All great truths begin as blasphemies.

» Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

» Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics.

» The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

» No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious.

» A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

» Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

» If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance.

» It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

» There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

» Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.

» Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

» Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; do not outlive yourself.

» Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

» If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion.

» The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

» We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

» Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

» The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

» What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.

» Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.

» Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open.

» If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.

» Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.

» You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

» No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

» Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!

» Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.

» Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty; what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.

» The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.

» Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

» Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.

» Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

» An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.

» Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

» Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

» He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

» Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

» I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.

» It's so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

» Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

» Oh, the tiger will love you. There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

» The only secrets are the secrets that keep themselves.

» The great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life.

» Never fret for an only son, the idea of failure will never occur to him.

» A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.

» Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

» Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

» General consultant to mankind.

» All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.

» Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

» A happy family is but an earlier heaven.

» An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

» Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

» Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal your own.

» The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

» Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

» The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

» When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn't got any.

» Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

» The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.

» We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

» Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

» I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

» Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.

» The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

» The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

» In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.

» The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.

» We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

» Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.

» The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.

» Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles.

» Lack of money is the root of all evil.

» There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

» A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

» Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

» Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

» Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

» Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

» He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

» I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.

» I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.

» In heaven an angel is nobody in particular.

» It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.

» A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

» Martyrdom: The only way a man can become famous without ability.

» She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.

» Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart's desire; the other is to get it.

» The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.

» Youth is wasted on the young.

» The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.

» Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

» The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

» You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

» Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.

» The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

» First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.

» I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.

» What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?

» Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

» Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes.

» Socialism is the same as Communism, only better English.

» Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

» Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it.

» He's a man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

» I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

» If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

» It is most unwise for people in love to marry.

» Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

» Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.

» Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.

» The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

» The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.

» There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

» Virtue is insufficient temptation.

» The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can't find them, make them.

» We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

» A man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

» Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn't really hurt.

» You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"

» Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

» The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

» Very few people can afford to be poor.

» Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.

» Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

» Hell is full of musical amateurs.

» Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

» If you injure your neighbour, better not do it by halves.

» Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

» The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.

» The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.

» Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

» When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

» You cannot be a hero without being a coward.

» I want to be all used up when I die.

» Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

» I'm an atheist and I thank God for it.

» In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it's more dangerous to lose than to win.

» Find enough clever things to say, and you're a Prime Minister; write them down and you're a Shakespeare.

» We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

» No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.

» An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.

» Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

» A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.

» Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

» The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.

» An index is a great leveller.

» A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

» There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.

» When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.

» The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

» Give a man health and a course to steer, and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not.

» Most people do not pray; they only beg.

» Property is organized robbery.

» We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

» People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

» Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.

» Some look at things that are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not?

» A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

» Syllables govern the world.

» People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

» If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

» My reputation grows with every failure.

» Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.

» The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

» Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability.

» A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.

» Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.

» You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.

» The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

» Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

» The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.

» Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

» What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?

» Better never than late.

» The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.

» A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.

» Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.

» You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

» Human beings are the only animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.

» If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn't be anything for us to do.

» The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

» The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who haven't got it.

» I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.

» The frontier between hell and heaven is only the difference between two ways of looking at things.

» Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

» Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.

» When I was young I observed that nine out of every ten things I did were failures, so I did ten times more work.

» We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence... on pain of liquidation.

» If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people's opinions will rush in from all quarters.

» There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.

» It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

» Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination.

» There is nothing more dangerous than the conscience of a bigot.

» There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.

» One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.

» Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

» A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.

» I am a Christian. That obliges me to be a Communist.

» Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

» The heretic is always better dead. And mortal eyes cannot distinguish the saint from the heretic.

» Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.

» Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.

» A man who has no office to go, to I don't care who he is, is a trial of which you can have no conception.

» Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

» Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.

» What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.

» When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

» If women were particular about men's characters, they would never get married at all.

» I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

» It's easier to replace a dead man than a good picture.

» I have to live for others and not for myself: that's middle-class morality.

» We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.

Who Said It?

Who Said: "The day of the wedding went like these things generally do, full of anxious moments interspersed with black comedy." Click To See

Daily Famous Quote

"Never stand between a dog and the hydrant." - John Peers

George Bernard Shaw Quotes

Who Said It?

Daily Famous Quote

Quotes by Author

Quotes by Topic