George Bernard Shaw Quotes

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

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

"The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me." -- George Bernard Shaw, The Philanderer (1898), Act II

"If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience?"

 

All progress is initiated

by challenging current conceptions,

and executed by supplanting existing institutions.

There is no love sincerer than the love of food.

To be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer.

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

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. -- G. B. Shaw

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. -- G. B. Shaw

G. B. Shaw to William Douglas Home: "Go on writing plays, my boy. One of these days a London producer will go into his office and say to his secretary, `Is there a play from Shaw this morning?' and when she says `No,' he will say, `Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish.' And that's your chance, my boy."

"I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind."

I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation. -- G. B. Shaw

NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier,
Guiseppe? Everything he says is wrong.
GUISEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says will be right.
-- G. B. Shaw, "The Man of Destiny"

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. -- G. B. Shaw

The seven deadly sins ... Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven milestones from man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the milestones are lifted.

There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it. -- G. B. 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.

"England and America are two countries separated by the same language."

"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul."
-- (1944), Everybody's Political What's What? ch. 30

"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches."
_Man and Superman_ (1903) `Maxims for Revolutionists: Education'

"Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history." --George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid."
_Man and Superman_ (1903) `Maxims for Revolutionists: Stray Sayings'

"Lack of money is the root of all evil."
_Man and Superman_ (1903) `Maxims for Revolutionists'

"Martyrdom is the only way a person can become famous without ability."

"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one."

"Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man."

"The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time."

"You see things and say 'Why?'; but I dream things that never were and I say 'Why not?'"

"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."

"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."

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

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

 

I am not a teacher---only

a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way.

I pointed ahead---

ahead of myself

as well as of you.

Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

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.

Every man is a revolutionist concerning the thing he understands. For example, every person who has mastered a profession is a sceptic concerning it, and consequently a revolutionist.

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

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.

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

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.

Reviewing has one advantage over suicide: in suicide you take it out on yourself; in reviewing you take it out on other people.

She had lost the art of conversation, but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.

Sherlock Holmes was a drug addict without a single amiable trait.

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
Man and Superman act 1, (1903)

A miracle, my friend, is an event which creates faith. That is the purpose and nature of miracles. Frauds deceive. An event which creates faith does not deceive: therefore it is not a fraud, but a miracle.
Saint Joan sc. 2, (1924)

A strange lady giving an address in Zurich wrote him [Shaw] a proposal, thus: `You have the greatest brain in the world, and I have the most beautiful body; so we ought to produce the most perfect child.' Shaw asked: `What if the child inherits my body and your brains?'
in Hesketh Pearson _Bernard Shaw_ (1942) p. 310

Alcohol is a very necessary article. It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.
_Major Barbara_ (1907) act 2

Anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you.
_Misalliance_ (1914) p. 85

Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
_Man and Superman_ (1903) `Maxims for Revolutionists: The Golden Rule'

Englishmen never will be slaves: they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allow them to do.
_Man and Superman_ (1903) act 3

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
_Man and Superman_ (1903) `Maxims for Revolutionists: Stray Sayings'

Gin was mother's milk to her.
_Pygmalion_ (1916) act 3

HIGGINS: Doolittle, you're either an honest man or a rogue.

    DOOLITTLE: A little of both, Guv'nor.  Like the rest of us, a little

      of both.

                  Pygmalion (1916)

He who has never hoped can never despair.
_Caesar and Cleopatra_ (1901) act 4

I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.
_Major Barbara_ (1907) act 2

I don't believe in morality. I am a disciple of Bernard Shaw.
_The Doctor's Dillema_ (1911) act 3

I never resist temptation because I have found things that are bad for me do not tempt me.
_The Apple Cart_ (1930) interlude

How can what an Englishman believes be heresy? It is a contradiction in terms.
_Saint Joan_ (1924) sc. 4

If parents would only realize how they bore their own children!
_Misalliance_ (1914)

If you strike a child take care that you strike it in anger, even at the risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neither can nor should be forgiven.
_Man and Superman_ (1903) `Maxims for Revolutionists: How to Beat Children'

In heaven an angel is nobody in particular.
_Man and Superman_ (1903) `Maxims for Revolutionists: Greatness'

Is the devil to have all the passions as well as all the good tunes?
_Man and Superman_ (1903) act 1

It's all the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.
_Fanny's First Play_ (1914) `Induction'

MENDOZA: I am a brigand: I live by robbing the rich.

    TANNER: I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor.

_Man and Superman_ act 3

Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all the sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis.
_The Irrational Knot_ (1905) preface, p. xiv

Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?
_Saint Joan_ (1924) epilogue

My aunt died of influenza: so they said. But it's my belief they done the old woman in.
_Pygmalion_ (1916) act 3

No eggs! No eggs!! Thousand thunders, man, what do you mean by no eggs?
_Saint Joan_ (1924) sc. 1

Nobody can say a word against Greek: it stamps a man at once as an educated gentleman.
_Major Barbara_ (1907) act 1

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.
_The Apple Cart_ (1930) act 1

PICKERING: Have you no morals, man?

    DOOLITTLE: Can't afford them, Governor.  Neither could you if you was

      as poor as me

_Pygmalion_ (1916) act 2

SWINDON: What will history say?

    BURGOYNE: History, sir, will tell lies as usual.

    _The Devil's Disciple_ (1901) act 3

Take care to get what you like, or you will be forced to like what you get.
_Man and Superman_ (1903) `Maxims for Revolutionists: Stray Sayings'

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
_Man and Superman_ (1903) `Maxims for Revolutionists: The Golden Rule'

The thought of two thousand people munching celery at the same time horrified me.
in G. Liebermann _The Greatest Laughs of All Time_
Explaining why had turned down an invitation to a vegetarian gala dinner.

They all thought she was dead; but my father he kept ladling gin down her throat till she came to so sudden that she bit the bowl of the spoon.
_Pygmalion_ (1916) act 3

Vitality in a woman is a blind fury of creation. She sacrifices herself to it.
_Man and Superman_ (1903) act 1

Well, sir, you never can tell. Thats a principle in life with me, sir. If youll excuse me having such a thing, sir.
_You Never Can Tell_ (1898) act 2

What Englishmen will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?
_The Apple Cart_ (1930) act 1

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
_Caesar and Cleopatra_ (1901) act 3

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

What we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real.

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

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

Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It is the funniest joke in the world.

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

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in the world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.

"Nobel Prize money is a lifebelt thrown to a swimmer who has already reached the shore in safety." -- George Bernard Shaw

"Assassination is the extreme form of censorship."

"I was a freethinker before I knew how to think."

"Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children."

If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.

Of all the damnable waste of human life that ever was invented, clerking is the worst.

British playwright

The liars punishment is, not in the least that he cannot be believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.

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

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

I want to sleep...
George Bernard Shaw's last words