Best quotes by the Irish Dramatist George Bernard Shaw
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.
Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.
The joy in life is to be used for a purpose. I want to be used up when I die.
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
The worst sin... is... to be indifferent.
There is no love sincerer than the love of food.
The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.
My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world.
He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
Even the youngest of us may be wrong sometimes.
If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn't be anything for us to do.
Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination.
The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.
As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
I was a freethinker before I knew how to think.
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience!
The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.
You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.
You see things; and you say Why? But I dream things that never were; and I say Why not?
The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms.
The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing.
An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.
Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
Youth is such a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
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George Bernard Shaw Quotes About
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Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles.
Life is a disease; and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You are always at the crisis: I am always in the convalescent stage.
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.
The great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life.
All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.
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.
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.
Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.
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.
In heaven an angel is no one in particular.
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George Bernard Shaw love quotes
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The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
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.
If you value a man's regard, strive with him. As to liking, you like your newspaper -- and despise it.
First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity: no really self-respecting woman would take advantage of it.
There is no sincerer love than the love of food.
Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.
Oh, the tiger will love you. There is no sincerer love than the love of food.
The love of economy is the root of all virtue.
First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.
It is most unwise for people in love to marry.
The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.
The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
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George Bernard Shaw religion quotes
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There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.
We sing in a church, why can we not dance there?
The Jews generally give value. They make you pay; but they deliver the goods. In my experience the men who want something for nothing are invariably Christians.
All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of story-tellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.
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.
The great danger of conversion in all ages has been that when the religion of the high mind is offered to the lower mind, the lower mind, feeling its fascination without understanding it, and being incapable of rising to it, drags it down to its level by degrading it.
No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.
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George Bernard Shaw people quotes
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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.
It is most unwise for people in love to marry.
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.
Very few people can afford to be poor.
Most people do not pray; they only beg.
People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.
People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.
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George Bernard Shaw marriage quotes
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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.
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than 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.
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.
This comes of James teaching me to think for myself, and never to hold back out of fear of what other people may think of me. It works beautifully as long as I think the same things as he does.
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.
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Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.
Self-denial is not a virtue, it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.
The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.
What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.
Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
You cannot be a hero without being a coward.
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness.
She has lost the art of conversation, but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.
Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones. All men mean well.
Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.
I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.
What use are cartridges in battle? I always carry chocolate instead.
When it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones.
Our necessities are few, but our wants are endless.
Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich, something for nothing.
A lifetime of happiness? No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth.
Give a man health and a course to steer; and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not.
We must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.
You see things as they are and ask, 'Why?' I dream things as they never were and ask, 'Why not?'
Independence? That's middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
Find enough clever things to say, and you're a Prime Minister; write them down and you're a Shakespeare.
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.
Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.
Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.
Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.
Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.
We know there is intention and purpose in the universe, because there is intention and purpose in us.
There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.
Majesty: when a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.
Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.
Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.
You have no more right to consume happiness without producing it, than you do to consume wealth without producing it.
Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run.
But a lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.
He who has never hoped can never despair.
Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites.
The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!
Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid of.
A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself.
Some men see things as they are and say, Why? I of dream things that never were, and say, Why not?
No question is so difficult to answer as that which the answer is obvious.
The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.
Science is always wrong, it never solves a problem without creating ten more.
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.
Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living.
Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books nobody reads.
I want to be all used up when I die.
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.
Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.
I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.
Human beings are the only animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.
Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
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.
Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
Lack of money is the root of all evil.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
All problems are finally scientific problems.
No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.
Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal.
Success covers a multitude of blunders.
The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves.
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.
Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
I have to live for others and not for myself: that's middle-class morality.
Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
If all the economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.
Rich men without convictions are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity.
We have not lost faith, but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession.
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 savage bows down to idols of wood and stone: the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood.
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
Morality is suspecting other people of not being legally married.
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
You'll never have a quiet world until you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
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.
My reputation grew with every failure.
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.
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.
A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.
When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.
An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends.
You see things; you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?
My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.
I'm not a teacher: only a fellow-traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead -- ahead of myself as well as you.
I'm only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler.
In Heaven an angel is nobody in particular.
I'm an atheist and I thank God for it.
Beauty is all very well at first sight; but whoever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?
