George Bernard Shaw quotes

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.

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

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

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

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

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

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

Most people do not pray; they only beg.

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

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

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

A reasonable man adapts himself to his environment. An unreasonable man persists in attempting to adapt his environment to suit himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

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

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

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

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

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

When we know what God is, we shall be gods ourselves.

A drama critic is a man who leaves no turn unstoned.

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.

A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

You cannot be a hero without being a coward.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

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

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

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

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

The only secrets are the secrets that keep themselves.

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

There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

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

Youth is wasted on the young.

A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

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

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Property is organized robbery.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

A true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.

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

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

Imagine what you desire. Will what you imagine. Create what you will.

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.

Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.

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

Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.

Some men see things as they are and say why - I dream things that never were and say why not.

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

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

The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.

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

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

The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

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

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.

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

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

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

This is the true joy in life - being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances.

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

Very few people can afford to be poor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

An index is a great leveller.

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

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

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

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

Better never than late.

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

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

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

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

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

Democracy 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.

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

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.

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

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

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

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

Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics.

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

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.

General consultant to mankind.

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

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

Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones. All men mean well.

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

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

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.

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

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

I know of only one duty, and that is to love.

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

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

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

I want to be all used up when I die.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence, and famine.

It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

My reputation grows with every failure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes.

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

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

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

Socialism is the same as Communism, only better English.

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

Syllables govern the world.

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

The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

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

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

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

What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?

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