Famous George Bernard Shaw Quotations

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"I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history."
by George Bernard Shaw
"He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches."
by George Bernard Shaw
"He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious."
by George Bernard Shaw
"It is most unwise for people in love to marry."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Lack of money is the root of all evil."
by 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."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."
by George Bernard Shaw
"There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world."
by George Bernard Shaw
"The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech."
by George Bernard Shaw
"The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post."
by 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."
by George Bernard Shaw
"A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses."
by George Bernard Shaw
"The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier."
by 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."
by George Bernard Shaw
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
by George Bernard Shaw
"The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business."
by George Bernard Shaw
"The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist."
by George Bernard Shaw
"The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel."
by George Bernard Shaw
"There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it."
by George Bernard Shaw
"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it."
by George Bernard Shaw
"We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future."
by George Bernard Shaw
"We have not lost faith, but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession."
by George Bernard Shaw
"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."
by George Bernard Shaw
"What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?"
by 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."
by George Bernard Shaw
"When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty."
by 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."
by George Bernard Shaw
"You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul."
by George Bernard Shaw
"As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough."
by George Bernard Shaw
"He who has never hoped can never despair."
by George Bernard Shaw
"He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned."
by George Bernard Shaw
"I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while."
by George Bernard Shaw
"I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize."
by George Bernard Shaw
"I'm an atheist and I thank God for it."
by George Bernard Shaw
"In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it."
by George Bernard Shaw
"It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."
by George Bernard Shaw
"If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn't be anything for us to do."
by George Bernard Shaw
"I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people."
by 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."
by George Bernard Shaw
"First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Find enough clever things to say, and you're a Prime Minister; write them down and you're a Shakespeare."
by George Bernard Shaw
"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."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same."
by George Bernard Shaw
"An asylum for the sane would be empty in America."
by George Bernard Shaw
"A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth."
by George Bernard Shaw
"A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree."
by George Bernard Shaw
"England and America are two countries separated by the same language."
by 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."
by George Bernard Shaw
"All great truths begin as blasphemies."
by George Bernard Shaw
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
by George Bernard Shaw
"The man who listens to Reason is lost reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her."
by 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."
by George Bernard Shaw
"The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react."
by George Bernard Shaw
"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."
by George Bernard Shaw
"He knows nothing and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career."
by George Bernard Shaw
"A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity."
by 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."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive."
by George Bernard Shaw
"A happy family is but an earlier heaven."
by George Bernard Shaw
"'Do you know what a pessimist is?' 'A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.'"
by George Bernard Shaw
"A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income."
by George Bernard Shaw
"A dramatic critic is a man who leaves no turn unstoned."
by George Bernard Shaw
"A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out."
by George Bernard Shaw
"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."
by 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."
by George Bernard Shaw
"A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing."
by George Bernard Shaw
"A learned man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge: it is more dangerous than ignorance."
by George Bernard Shaw
"A learned man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge it is more dangerous than ignorance."
by George Bernard Shaw
"A lifetime of happiness No man alive could bear it it would be hell on earth."
by George Bernard Shaw
"A man ought to be able to be fond of his wife without making a fool of himself about her."
by George Bernard Shaw
"A man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage."
by George Bernard Shaw
"A man never tells you anything until you contradict him."
by 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."
by George Bernard Shaw
"A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows"
by George Bernard Shaw
"A pessimist thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it."
by George Bernard Shaw
"A woman whose face looked as if it had been made of sugar and someone had licked it."
by George Bernard Shaw (about Isadora Duncan)
"A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Activity is the only road to knowledge."
by George Bernard Shaw
"All censorships exist to prevent any one 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 censorships."
by George Bernard Shaw
"Alcohol is a very necessary article....It makes life bearable for millions of people who could not endure it’s existence if they were quite sober."
by George Bernard Shaw
"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."
by George Bernard Shaw
"All professions are conspiracies against the laity."
by George Bernard Shaw


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