110+ George Bernard Shaw Quotes On Happiness, Communication And Marriage

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest dramatists of the 20th century, and is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize in Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938). His most famous works include Pygmalion, Man and Superman, and Major Barbara. Following is our collection on famous quotes by George Bernard Shaw on happiness, life, communication.

Top 10 George Bernard Shaw Quotes

1. Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.
2. We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
3. People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.
4. I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.
5. Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
6. A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
7. Write your Sad times in Sand, Write your Good times in Stone.
8. You see things and you say, 'Why?'. But I dream things and I say, 'Why not?'.
9. The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
10. A cigarette is a pinch of tobacco rolled in paper with fire at one end and a fool at the other.

George Bernard Shaw Image Quotes

We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. — George Bernard Shaw

People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it. — George Bernard Shaw

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. — George Bernard Shaw

Write your Sad times in Sand, Write your Good times in Stone. — George Bernard Shaw

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience. — George Bernard Shaw

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. — George Bernard Shaw

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get. — George Bernard Shaw

Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness. — George Bernard Shaw

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn. — George Bernard Shaw

The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business. — George Bernard Shaw

The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people. — George Bernard Shaw

Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated. — George Bernard Shaw

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life. — George Bernard Shaw

The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine. — George Bernard Shaw

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules. — George Bernard Shaw

Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful. — George Bernard Shaw

I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while. — George Bernard Shaw

A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out. — George Bernard Shaw

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable. — George Bernard Shaw

The harder I work the more I live. — George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw Short Quotes

• We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.
• Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
• Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.
• Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
• We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
• He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
• Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.
• The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.
• The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
• All progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw Quotes About Happiness

Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness. — George Bernard Shaw

A happy family is but an earlier heaven. — George Bernard Shaw

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

The only person who acts sensibly is my tailor. He takes my measure anew every time he sees me. Everyone else goes by their old measurements. — George Bernard Shaw

Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannot endure it. Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life. — George Bernard Shaw

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

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 on to future generations. — George Bernard Shaw

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. — George Bernard Shaw

The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality. — George Bernard Shaw

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 happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality. — George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw Quotes About Life

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. — George Bernard Shaw

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life. — George Bernard Shaw

Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful. — George Bernard Shaw

The joy in life is to be used for a purpose. I want to be used up when I die. — George Bernard Shaw

No man manages his affairs as well as a tree does — George Bernard Shaw

When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part. — George Bernard Shaw

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. — George Bernard Shaw

Consistency is the enemy of enterprise, just as symmetry is the enemy of art. — George Bernard Shaw

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. — George Bernard Shaw

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

George Bernard Shaw Quotes About Marriage

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. — George Bernard Shaw

All young women begin by believing they can change and reform the men they marry. They can't. — George Bernard Shaw

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. — George Bernard Shaw

Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity. — George Bernard Shaw

Marriage is to me apostasy, profanation of the sanctuary of my soul, violation of my manhood, sale of my birthright, shameful surrender, ignominious capitulation, acceptance of defeat. — George Bernard Shaw

The confusing of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error. — George Bernard Shaw

There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage. — George Bernard Shaw

To disbelieve in marriage is easy: to love a married woman is easy; but to betray a comrade, to be disloyal to a host, to break the covenant of bread and salt, is impossible. — George Bernard Shaw

Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us. — George Bernard Shaw

What is any respectable girl brought up to do but to catch some rich man's fancy and get the benefit of his money by marrying him?--as if a marriage ceremony could make any difference in the right or wrong of the thing! — George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw Quotes About Love

When you loved me I gave you the whole sun and stars to play with. I gave you eternity in a single moment, strength of the mountains in one clasp of your arms, and the volume of all the seas in one impulse of your soul. — George Bernard Shaw

The most sincere form of love is love for food — George Bernard Shaw

My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself. — George Bernard Shaw

Wicked people means people who have no love: therefore, they have no shame. They have the power to ask love because the don't need it: they have the power to offer it because they have none to give. — George Bernard Shaw

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity. — George Bernard Shaw

Opera is when a tenor and soprano want to make love, but are prevented from doing so by a baritone. — George Bernard Shaw

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

Only in books has mankind known perfect truth, love and beauty. — George Bernard Shaw

The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post. — George Bernard Shaw

There is no love sincerer than the love of food. — George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw Quotes About Death

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death. — George Bernard Shaw

I want to be all used up when I die. — George Bernard Shaw

Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination. — George Bernard Shaw

There is only one belief that can rob death of its sting and the grave of its victory. For without that you cannot be born again. — George Bernard Shaw

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent. — George Bernard Shaw

Life is a flame that is always burning itself out; but it catches fire again every time a child is born. Life is greater than death, and hope than despair. — George Bernard Shaw

Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind. It is the deed that teaches not the name we give it. — George Bernard Shaw

Don't order any black things. Rejoice in his memory; and be radiant: leave grief to the children. Wear violet and purple. Be patient with the poor people who will snivel: they don't know; and they think they will live for ever, which makes death a division instead of a bond. — George Bernard Shaw

Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one's heart; but death is a splendid thing --a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces. — George Bernard Shaw

Imprisonment is as irrevocable as death. — George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw Quotes About Work

The harder I work the more I live. — George Bernard Shaw

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

It is easy -- terribly easy -- to shake a man's faith in himself. To take advantage of that to break a man's spirit is devil's work. — George Bernard Shaw

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. — George Bernard Shaw

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. — George Bernard Shaw

If in the library of your house you do not have the works of the ancient Greek writers, then you live in a house with no light. — George Bernard Shaw

A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. — George Bernard Shaw

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

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell. — George Bernard Shaw

Idiots are always in favour of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favour of equality. — George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw Quotes About Democracy

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. — George Bernard Shaw

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. — George Bernard Shaw

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

Unless the people can choose their leaders and rulers, and can revoke their choice at intervals long enough to test their measuresby results, the government will be a tyranny exercised in the interests of whatever classes or castes or mobs or cliques have this choice. — George Bernard Shaw

The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols. — George Bernard Shaw

If Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters. — George Bernard Shaw

To make Democracy work, you need an aristocratic democracy. To make Aristocracy work, you need a democratic aristocracy. — George Bernard Shaw

Democracy is a word all public men use and none understand. — George Bernard Shaw

Our political experiment of democracy, the last refuge of cheap misgovernment. — George Bernard Shaw

Democracy means the organization of society for the benefit and at the expense of everybody indiscriminately and not for the benefit of a privileged class. — George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw Quotes About Witty

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth. — George Bernard Shaw

There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem. — George Bernard Shaw

The ability to make witty observations is commonly refered to as "cynism" by people who lack it. — George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw Quotes About People

The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business. — George Bernard Shaw

The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people. — George Bernard Shaw

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. — George Bernard Shaw

Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability. — George Bernard Shaw

At present, intelligent people do not have their children vaccinated, nor does the law now compel them to. The result is not, as the Jennerians prophesied, the extermination of the human race by smallpox; on the contrary more people are now killed by vaccination than by smallpox. — George Bernard Shaw

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them. — George Bernard Shaw

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing. — George Bernard Shaw

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

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. — George Bernard Shaw

My specialty is being right when other people are wrong. — George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw Quotes About World

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

A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out. — George Bernard Shaw

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable. — George Bernard Shaw

To the person with a toothache, even if the world is tottering, there is nothing more important than a visit to a dentist. — George Bernard Shaw

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

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

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. — George Bernard Shaw

Newspaper : A device unable to distinguish between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation. — George Bernard Shaw

When the world goes mad, one must accept madness as sanity; since sanity is, in the last analysis, nothing but the madness on which the whole world happens to agree. — George Bernard Shaw

In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it. — George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw Quotes About Dangerous

It is not disbelief that is dangerous to our society; it is belief. — George Bernard Shaw

It is more dangerous to be a great prophet or poet than to promote twenty companies for swindling simple folk out of their savings. — George Bernard Shaw

Science is always simple and always profound. It is only the half-truths that are dangerous. — George Bernard Shaw

Security, the chief pretense of civilization, cannot exist where the worst of dangers, the danger of poverty, hangs over everyone's head. — George Bernard Shaw

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid. — George Bernard Shaw

There is nothing more dangerous than the conscience of a bigot. — George Bernard Shaw

Without danger I cannot be great. That is how I pay for Abel's blood. Danger and fear follow my steps everywhere. Without them courage would have no sense. And it is courage, courage, courage that raises the blood of life to crimson splendor. — George Bernard Shaw

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. — George Bernard Shaw

Rich men without convictions are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity. — George Bernard Shaw

Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal. — George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw Famous Quotes And Sayings

We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. — George Bernard Shaw

People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it. — George Bernard Shaw

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. — George Bernard Shaw

Write your Sad times in Sand, Write your Good times in Stone. — George Bernard Shaw

Don't lose faith. Promise yourself that you will be a success story, and I promise you that all the forces of the universe will unite to come to your aid; you might not feel today or for a while, but the longer you wait the bigger the prize. — George Bernard Shaw

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. — George Bernard Shaw

A socialist is somebody who doesn't have anything, and is ready to divide it up equally among everybody. — George Bernard Shaw

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. — George Bernard Shaw

No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office. — George Bernard Shaw

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get. — George Bernard Shaw

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 for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most. — George Bernard Shaw

If at age 20 you are not a Communist then you have no heart. If at age 30 you are not a Capitalist then you have no brains. — George Bernard Shaw

Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness. — George Bernard Shaw

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn. — George Bernard Shaw

The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business. — George Bernard Shaw

The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people. — George Bernard Shaw

Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated. — George Bernard Shaw

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life. — George Bernard Shaw

I can think of no other edifice constructed by man as altruistic as a lighthouse. They were built only to serve. — George Bernard Shaw

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

The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine. — George Bernard Shaw

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules. — George Bernard Shaw

Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful. — George Bernard Shaw

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

I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while. — George Bernard Shaw

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

A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out. — George Bernard Shaw

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

If a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth - beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals - would you concede them the rights over you that you assume over other animals? — George Bernard Shaw

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable. — George Bernard Shaw

The harder I work the more I live. — George Bernard Shaw

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

Youth is such a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children. — George Bernard Shaw

The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown. — George Bernard Shaw

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire. — George Bernard Shaw

How can what an Englishman believes be hearsay? It is a contradiction in terms. — George Bernard Shaw

Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research. — George Bernard Shaw

The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react. — George Bernard Shaw

Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends. — George Bernard Shaw

If 'Pygmalion' is not good enough for your friends with its own verbal music, their talent must be altogether extraordinary. — George Bernard Shaw

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

There is not one single established religion that an intelligent, educated man can believe. — George Bernard Shaw

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

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

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

Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination. — George Bernard Shaw

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

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

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches. — George Bernard Shaw

A soldier is an anachronism of which we must get rid. — George Bernard Shaw

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

England and America are two countries separated by the same language. — George Bernard Shaw

A learned man is an idler who kills time by study. — George Bernard Shaw

After studying the Hungarian language for years, I can confidently conclude that had Hungarian been my mother tongue, it would have been more precious. Simply because through this extraordinary, ancient and powerful language it is possible to precisely describe the tiniest differences and the most secretive tremors of emotions. — George Bernard Shaw

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. — George Bernard Shaw

We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins. — George Bernard Shaw

If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a foot-rule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved. — George Bernard Shaw

It is not enough to know what is good: you must be able to do it. — George Bernard Shaw

All evolution in thought and conduct must at first appear as heresy and misconduct. — George Bernard Shaw

Any sort of plain speaking is better than the nauseous sham good fellowship our democratic public men get up for shop use. — George Bernard Shaw

I hope you have lost your good looks, for while they last any fool can adore you, and the adoration of fools is bad for the soul. No, give me a ruined complexion and a lost figure and sixteen chins on a farmyard of Crow's feet and an obvious wig. Then you shall see me coming out strong. — George Bernard Shaw

All great truths begin as blasphemies. — George Bernard Shaw

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

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

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship. — George Bernard Shaw

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

I was a freethinker before I knew how to think. — George Bernard Shaw

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say I know instead of I am learning, and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity. — George Bernard Shaw

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

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience. — George Bernard Shaw

The longer I live, the more convinced am I that this planet is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum. — George Bernard Shaw

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity. — George Bernard Shaw

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. — George Bernard Shaw

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America. — George Bernard Shaw

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is. — George Bernard Shaw

Decency is indecency's conspiracy of silence — George Bernard Shaw

Life Lessons by George Bernard Shaw

1. George Bernard Shaw taught that life should be lived with passion and purpose, and that one should strive to make the most of their potential.
2. He also believed that one should not be afraid to challenge the status quo and think for themselves, and that success is not necessarily measured by material wealth.
3. Finally, Shaw emphasized the importance of having an open mind and being willing to learn from others, no matter their social standing.