George Bernard Shaw Quotes

The devil can quote Shakespeare for his own purpose.

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

I was convinced that Ceylon is the cradle of the human race because everyone there looks an original.

Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the difference between one young woman and another.

You accepted Allah or you had your throat cut by someone who did accept him, and who went to Paradise for having sent you to Hell.

The Captain: A martyr, Lavinia, is a fool. Your death will prove nothing.
Lavinia: Then why kill me?

I don't want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady.

I can't control what life did to me, but I can control how I react. Therein lies the difference.

To make Democracy work, you need an aristocratic democracy. To make Aristocracy work, you need a democratic aristocracy.

We are not taught to think decently on sex subjects, and consequently we have no language for them except indecent language.

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

Every man deserves to be judged in the context of his times.

A tranquil woman can go on sewing longer than an angry man can go on fuming.

Whenever you wish to do anything against the law, Cicely, always consult a good solicitor first.

It is clear that a novel cannot be too bad to be worth publishing ... It certainly is possible for a novel to be too good to be worth publishing.

Let not the right side of your brain know what the left side doeth.

Gardening is the only unquestionably useful job.

The function of comedy is to dispelunconsciousness by turning the searchlight of the keenest moral and intellectual analysisright on to it.

Every step of progress means a duty repudiated, and a scripture torn up.

Most people do not pray; they only beg.

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

Common people do not pray; they only beg.

Save yourself for my sake. And I will go with you to the end of the world.

Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error.

I like flowers, I also like children, but I do not chop their heads off and keep them in bowls of water around the house.

Bourgeois morality is largely a system of making cheap virtues a cloak for expensive vices.

Has fear ever held a man back from anything he really wanted?

The test to which all methods of treatment are finally brought is whether they are lucrative to doctors or not.

Greatness is one of the sensations of littleness

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

Love is an appetite which, like all other appetites, is destroyed for the moment by its gratification.

What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?

Don't think you can frighten me by telling me that I am alone. France is alone. God is alone. And the loneliness of God is His strength.

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

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

[H]e is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.

When you find something funny search it for hidden truth.

The early Christian rules of life were not made to last, because the early Christians did not believe that the world itself was going to last.

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

Well, I've known over thirty men who've found out how to cure consumption. Why do people go on dying of it, Colly? Devilment I suppose!

Instead of Otello being an Italian opera written in the style of Shakespeare, Othello is a play written by Shakespeare in the style of Italian opera.

Hate is the revenge of a coward intimidated.

Education can and should do much influence social, moral and intellectual discovery by stimulating critical attitudes of thought in the young

You know, Tolstoy, like myself, wasn't taken in by superstitions like science and medicine.

The word morality, if we met it in the Bible, would surprise us as much as the word telephone or motor car.

Obedience simulates subordination as fear of the police simulates honesty.

The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.

Of all the anti-social vested interests the worst is the vested interest in ill-health.

What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.

Fear is choosing the safe course

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

Rebecca [West] can handle a pen as brilliantly as ever I could and much more savagely.

The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language; the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

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

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.

Lack of money is the root of all evil.

A man without an address is a vagabond; a man with two addresses is a libertine.

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

If you say that God is good, great, blessed, wise or any such thing, the starting point is this : God is.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

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

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

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

When a heretic wishes to avoid martyrdom he speaks of "Orthodoxy, True and False" and demonstrates that the True is his heresy.

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

There was only one virtue, pugnacity; only one vice, pacifism. That is an essential condition of war.

A mind of the caliber of mine cannot derive its nutrient from cows.

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

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

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

Write your Sad times in Sand,
Write your Good times in Stone.

The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.

Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.

The churches must learn humility as well as teach it.

I don't believe in morality . I'm a disciple of Bernard Shaw.

Where equality is undisputed, so also is subordination.

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.

In heaven an angel is no one in particular.

To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching.

Life is like a flame that is always burning itself out ...

Beware of the man whose God is in the skies.

I know I began as a passion and have ended as a habit , like all husbands .

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

It is the first duty of every man not to be poor.

Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.

Literature is too full of 'acknowledgments' and squabbles about originality ...

God is on the side of the big battalions.

A thing that nobody believes cannot be proved too often.

The world will forgive you for the sake of your blazing boyishness. (Written to Lord Alfred Douglas)

Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby

Dancing is a very crude attempt to get into the rhythm of life.

If you can't appreciate what you've got, you'd better get what you can appreciate.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.

Belief in God meant belief in the old tribal idol called Jehovah; and I would not pretend I did not know whether it existed or not.

A man who loses his money gains, at the least, experience, and sometimes, something better.

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

The righteous man takes his life in his hand whenever he utters the truth.