George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was an Irish playwright. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays. Nearly all his writings deal sternly with prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy to make their stark themes more palatable. Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care and class privilege.He was most angered by the exploitation of the working class, and most of his writings censure that abuse. An ardent socialist, Shaw wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society
George Bernard Shaw
Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.
George Bernard Shaw
Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.
George Bernard Shaw
Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.
George Bernard Shaw
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
Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that
are denied to us.
George Bernard Shaw
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum
of opportunity.
George Bernard Shaw
Martyrdom: The only way a man can become famous without ability.
George Bernard Shaw
Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for
experience.
George Bernard Shaw
Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability.
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
Most people do not pray; they only beg.
George Bernard Shaw
My reputation grows with every failure.
George Bernard Shaw
Never fret for an only son, the idea of failure will never occur to him.
George Bernard Shaw
No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it
says what he means.
George Bernard Shaw
A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable
income.
George Bernard Shaw
A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.
George Bernard Shaw
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into
pedantry. Hence University education.
George Bernard Shaw
A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.
George Bernard Shaw
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
George Bernard Shaw
A happy family is but an earlier heaven.
George Bernard Shaw
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life
spent doing nothing.
George Bernard Shaw
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.
George Bernard Shaw
A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.
George Bernard Shaw
A man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality
or moral courage.
George Bernard Shaw
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.
George Bernard Shaw
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
George Bernard Shaw
A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.
George Bernard Shaw
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
George Bernard Shaw
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
George Bernard Shaw
All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made
has been taken in spite of it.
George Bernard Shaw
Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.
George Bernard Shaw
An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.
George Bernard Shaw
An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for
every soul concerned in it.
George Bernard Shaw
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
George Bernard Shaw
No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses
his self-respect.
George Bernard Shaw
No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious.
George Bernard Shaw
Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not
done.
George Bernard Shaw
Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.
George Bernard Shaw
Oh, the tiger will love you. There is no sincerer love than the love of food.
George Bernard Shaw
If you injure your neighbour, better not do it by halves.
George Bernard Shaw
If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people's
opinions will rush in from all quarters.
George Bernard Shaw
If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a
warning and not as an example.
George Bernard Shaw
Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you
imagine and at last you create what you will.
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
In heaven an angel is nobody in particular.
George Bernard Shaw
In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.
George Bernard Shaw
Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another,
every soul of us on earth.
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
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
George Bernard Shaw
It is most unwise for people in love to marry.
George Bernard Shaw
It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.
George Bernard Shaw
It's easier to replace a dead man than a good picture.
George Bernard Shaw
It's so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.
George Bernard Shaw
Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.
George Bernard Shaw
Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination.
George Bernard Shaw
Lack of money is the root of all evil.
George Bernard Shaw
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
George Bernard Shaw
Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart's desire; the other is to
get it.
George Bernard Shaw
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious
when people laugh.
George Bernard Shaw
Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.
George Bernard Shaw
One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.
George Bernard Shaw
Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and
abiding love.
George Bernard Shaw
Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in
the interest of the children.
George Bernard Shaw
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were
born in it.
George Bernard Shaw
Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.
George Bernard Shaw
People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are
attached to them.
George Bernard Shaw
People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.
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
Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes.
George Bernard Shaw
Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt
power.
George Bernard Shaw
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot
change anything.
George Bernard Shaw
Property is organized robbery.
George Bernard Shaw
Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.
George Bernard Shaw
Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.
George Bernard Shaw
Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.
George Bernard Shaw
She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.
George Bernard Shaw
Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
George Bernard Shaw
Socialism is the same as Communism, only better English.
George Bernard Shaw
Some look at things that are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask
why not?
George Bernard Shaw
Human beings are the only animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.
George Bernard Shaw
I am a Christian. That obliges me to be a Communist.
George Bernard Shaw
I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children
that honesty is the best policy.
George Bernard Shaw
I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.
George Bernard Shaw
I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.
George Bernard Shaw
I have to live for others and not for myself: that's middle-class morality.
George Bernard Shaw
I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes
it.
George Bernard Shaw
I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me do not
tempt me.
George Bernard Shaw
I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe
from people.
George Bernard Shaw
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
George Bernard Shaw
I want to be all used up when I die.
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
I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.
George Bernard Shaw
I'm an atheist and I thank God for it.
George Bernard Shaw
If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion.
George Bernard Shaw
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man
be of learning from experience.
George Bernard Shaw
If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn't be anything for us to do.
George Bernard Shaw
If women were particular about men's characters, they would never get married at all.
George Bernard Shaw
If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance.
George Bernard Shaw
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
George Bernard Shaw
Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.
George Bernard Shaw
Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a
second time.
George Bernard Shaw
Syllables govern the world.
George Bernard Shaw
Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.
George Bernard Shaw
The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.
George Bernard Shaw
The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.
George Bernard Shaw
The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.
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.
George Bernard Shaw
The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.
George Bernard Shaw
The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the
women who love me.
George Bernard Shaw
The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.
George Bernard Shaw
The frontier between hell and heaven is only the difference between two ways of looking
at things.
George Bernard Shaw
The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
George Bernard Shaw
The great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life.
George Bernard Shaw
The heretic is always better dead. And mortal eyes cannot distinguish the saint from
the heretic.
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
The love of economy is the root of all virtue.
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
The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The povertystricken
man makes the same mistake about the rich man.
George Bernard Shaw
The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.
George Bernard Shaw
The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and
become blind to the arguments against it.
George Bernard Shaw
The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.
George Bernard Shaw
The only secrets are the secrets that keep themselves.
George Bernard Shaw
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.
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 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.
George Bernard Shaw
The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.
George Bernard Shaw
The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.
George Bernard Shaw
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not
got it.
George Bernard Shaw
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy
or not. The cure for it is occupation.
George Bernard Shaw
The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.
George Bernard Shaw
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
George Bernard Shaw
The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.
George Bernard Shaw
The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.
George Bernard Shaw
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of
speech.
George Bernard Shaw
The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really
inflexible point of honor.
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
There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.
George Bernard Shaw
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain
it.
George Bernard Shaw
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.
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
England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
George Bernard Shaw
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
George Bernard Shaw
Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it.
George Bernard Shaw
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
George Bernard Shaw
Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his
affairs as well as a tree does.
George Bernard Shaw
Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics.
George Bernard Shaw
Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.
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
Find enough clever things to say, and you're a Prime Minister; write them down and
you're a Shakespeare.
George Bernard Shaw
First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.
George Bernard Shaw
General consultant to mankind.
George Bernard Shaw
Give a man health and a course to steer, and he'll never stop to trouble about whether
he's happy or not.
George Bernard Shaw
He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political
career.
George Bernard Shaw
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
George Bernard Shaw
He's a man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without
originality or moral courage.
George Bernard Shaw
Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn
anything from history.
George Bernard Shaw
Hell is full of musical amateurs.
George Bernard Shaw
Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.
George Bernard Shaw
What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?
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
When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn't got any.
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
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his
duty.
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
Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest
the door of course.
George Bernard Shaw
Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he
shouldn't!
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
Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
George Bernard Shaw
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.
George Bernard Shaw
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.
George Bernard Shaw
You cannot be a hero without being a coward.
George Bernard Shaw
You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why
not?"
George Bernard Shaw
You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.
George Bernard Shaw
You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
George Bernard Shaw
Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
George Bernard Shaw
Youth is wasted on the young.
George Bernard Shaw
An index is a great leveller.
George Bernard Shaw
Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.
George Bernard Shaw
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
George Bernard Shaw
Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.
George Bernard Shaw
Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.
George Bernard Shaw
Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the
house three days?
George Bernard Shaw
Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see
the world.
George Bernard Shaw
Better never than late.
George Bernard Shaw
Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.
George Bernard Shaw
Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you
to forgive yourself.
George Bernard Shaw
Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest
backed by force.
George Bernard Shaw
Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except
the books that nobody reads.
George Bernard Shaw
Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal
your own.
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
Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn't really
hurt.
George Bernard Shaw
There is no sincerer love than the love of food.
George Bernard Shaw
There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than
marriage.
George Bernard Shaw
There is nothing more dangerous than the conscience of a bigot.
George Bernard Shaw
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
George Bernard Shaw
Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.
George Bernard Shaw
Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the
mercy of those who have none.
George Bernard Shaw
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.
George Bernard Shaw
Very few people can afford to be poor.
George Bernard Shaw
Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.
George Bernard Shaw
Virtue is insufficient temptation.
George Bernard Shaw
We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
George Bernard Shaw
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our
future.
George Bernard Shaw
We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.
George Bernard Shaw
We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
George Bernard Shaw
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume
wealth without producing it.
George Bernard Shaw
We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.
George Bernard Shaw
We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as
they are said to be.
George Bernard Shaw
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