George Bernard Shaw quotes

Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

• 9
• adaptation

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

• 9
• hunting

The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.

• 9
• wealth

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

• 9
• cynicism

The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing.

• 9
• forgiveness

A lifetime of happiness? No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth.

• 9
• happiness

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

• 9
• religion

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

• 9
• age

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

• 8
• money

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

• 8
• laughter

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

• 7
• patriotism

Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!

• 7
• forgiveness

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

• 7
• intelligence

We know there is intention and purpose in the universe, because there is intention and purpose in us.

• 7
• purpose

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

• 7
• danger

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

• 7
• mistakes

What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.

• 7
• flattery

You cannot be a hero without being a coward.

• 7
• heroesheroism

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

• 7
• purpose

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

• 6
• hell

What use are cartridges in battle? I always carry chocolate instead.

• 6
• chocolate

Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich, something for nothing.

• 6
• gambling

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

• 6
• bravery

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

• 6
• honesty

Science is always wrong, it never solves a problem without creating ten more.

• 5
• science

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

• 5
• power

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.

• 5
• patriotism

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

• 5
• happiness

Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run.

• 5
• envy

When it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones.

• 5
• crime

You have no more right to consume happiness without producing it, than you do to consume wealth without producing it.

• 5
• consume

Our necessities are few, but our wants are endless.

• 5
• desires

Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.

• 5
• music

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

• 5
• perception

Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.

• 5
• pleasure

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

• 5

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

• 5
• secrets

A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself.

• 5
• pessimism

I want to be all used up when I die.

• 5
• death

It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.

• 4
• youth

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

• 4
• sincerity

Lack of money is the root of all evil.

• 4
• money

We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!

• 4
• madness

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

• 4
• right

Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.

• 4
• consequences

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

• 4
• time

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

• 4
• voting

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.

• 4
• art

Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal.

• 4
• science

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

• 4
• duty

Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid of.

• 4
• men

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

• 4
• argument

Some men see things as they are and say, Why? I of dream things that never were, and say, Why not?

• 4
• prophecy

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

• 4
• humanity

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

• 4
• love

He who has never hoped can never despair.

• 4
• hope

Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.

• 4
• royalty

No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.

• 3
• professionalism

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

• 3
• prison

Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.

• 3
• memory

It is a woman's business to get married as soon as possible, and a man's to keep unmarried as long as he can.

• 3
• marriage

All problems are finally scientific problems.

• 3
• problems

My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.

• 3
• religion

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

• 3
• healing

Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.

• 3
• ancestry

You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living.

• 3
• authors

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

• 3
• instinct

Morality is suspecting other people of not being legally married.

• 3
• morals

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

• 3
• marriage

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

• 3
• morals

Success covers a multitude of blunders.

• 3
• success

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

• 3
• voting

Rich men without convictions are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity.

• 3
• ethics

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

• 3
• quotations

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

• 3
• experience

I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.

• 3
• evil

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

• 2
• animals

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

• 2
• sadness

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

• 2
• professionalism

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

• 2
• revolution

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

• 2
• age

There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.

• 2
• tragedy

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

• 2
• sacrifice

The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

• 2
• debt

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

• 2
• teaching

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

• 2
• alcohol

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

• 2
• funny

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

• 2
• inspirational

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

• 2
• common

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.

• 2
• friends

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

• 2
• intelligence

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.

• 2
• vegetarian

The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves.

• 2

It took me twenty years of studied self-restraint, aided by the natural decay of my faculties, to make myself dull enough to be accepted as a serious person by the British public.

• 2
• restraint

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

• 2
• sadness

When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.

• 2
• singing

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

• 2
• democracy

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

• 2
• death

We have not lost faith, but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession.

• 2
• faith

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

• 2
• class

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

• 2
• another

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

• 2
• family

The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone: the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood.

• 2
• god

The philosopher is Nature's pilot. And there you have our difference: to be n hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.

• 2
• philosophy

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

• 1
• nature

Property is organized robbery.

• 1
• property

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.

• 1
• wisdom

We sing in a church, why can we not dance there?

• 1
• religion

Girls, like men, want to be petted, pitied, and made much of, when they are diffident, in low spirits, or in unrequited love. These are services which the weak cannot render to the strong and which the strong will not render to the weak, except when there is also a difference of sex.

• 1
• unrequited

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

• 1
• creatures

How can you dare teach a man to read until you've taught him everything else first?

• 1
• reading

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.

• 1
• progress

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

• 1
• art

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

• 1
• success

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

• 1
• anything

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

• 1
• grow

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

• 1
• censorship

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

• 1
• energy

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

• 1
• marriage

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

• 1
• backed