George Bernard Shaw Quotes
"A modern gentleman (rich person) is necessarily the enemy of his country. Even in war he does not fight to defend it, but to prevent his power of preying on it from passing to a foreigner."
A fool`s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.
The liar`s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed but that he cannot believe anyone else.
Lack of money is the root of all evil.
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.
Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
Hell is full of musical amateurs.
Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
A day`s work is a day`s work, neither more nor less, and the man who does it needs a day`s sustenance, a night`s repose and due leisure, whether he be painter or ploughman.
Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich--something for nothing.
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth.
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
An American has no sense of privacy. He does not know what it means.There is no such thing in the country.
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.
Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.
If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.
If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a footrule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved.
A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.
Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.
Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
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.
Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.
England and America are two countries separated by a common language.
We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.
Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn`t!
Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.
The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.
Orchestras only need to be sworn at, and a German is consequently at an advantage with them, as English profanity, except in America, has not gone beyond a limited technology of perdition.
Forget about likes and dislikes. They are of no consequence. Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness but it is greatness.
The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
In a hospital they throw you out into the street before you are half cured, but in a nursing home they don`t let you out till you are dead.
Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you`re driving at another.
Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being ended sooner.
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart`s desire. The other is to get it.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.
In heaven an angel is nobody in particular.
You cannot believe in honor until you have achieved it, better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world
I never resist temptation because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.
All evolution in thought and conduct must at first appear as heresy and misconduct.
You see things; and you say, `Why?` But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"
The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.
If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.
Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.
We don`t bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don`t dress well and we`ve no manners.
Socialism is the same as Communism, only better English
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
Oh, the tiger will love you. There is no sincerer love than the love of food.
He who has never hoped can never despair.
There is no sincerer love than the love of food.
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that`s the essence of inhumanity
Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy
A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
My reputation grows with every failure.
No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.
We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.
You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.
One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven`t and don`t.
Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time
First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.
Newspapers are unable, seemingly to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization
Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
We don`t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.
We veneer civilization by doing unkind things in a kind way
Science... never solves a problem without creating ten more.
There is no love sincerer than the love of food.
Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.
Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not a man of honor
I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig, you get dirty; and besides, the pig likes it.
Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.
Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it onto future generations.
You`ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
Old men are dangerous it doesn`t matter to them what is going to happen to the world
The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.
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.
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.
Youth is wasted on the young.
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
If all the economists were laid end to end, they`d never reach a conclusion.
Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.
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.
Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
You`ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
