Quotes by George Bernard Shaw
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I am the most spontaneous speaker in the world because every word, every gesture, and every retort has been carefully rehearsed.

For nearly twenty years I have been a published author... But I have never yet seen a book of mine offered for sale in a shop window.

The whole world is strewn with snares, traps, gins and pitfalls for the capture of men by women.

Creation is a miracle of daily recurrence. 'A miracle a minute' would not be a bad slogan for God.

A revolutionist is one who desires to discard the existing social order and try another.

Social progress takes effect through the replacement of all institutions by new ones; and since every institution involves the recognition of the duty of conforming to it, progress must involve the repudiation of an established duty at every step.

It is courage, courage, courage, that raises the blood of life to crimson splendor.

Obedience simulates subordination as fear of the police simulates honesty.

The danger of crippling thought, the danger of obstructing the formation of the public mind by specially suppressing ... representations is far greater than any real danger that there is from such representations.

No king on earth is as safe in his job as a Trade Union official. There is only one thing that can get him sacked; and that is drink. Not even that, as long as he doesn't actually fall down.

Don't lose faith. Promise yourself that you will be a success story, and I promise you that all the forces of the universe will unite to come to your aid; you might not feel today or for a while, but the longer you wait the bigger the prize.

I am highly susceptible to the force of all truly religious music, especially to the music of my own church, the church of Shelley, Michelangelo, and Beethoven.

The fact is that the intrinsic worth of the book, play or whatever the author is trying to sell is the least, last factor in the the whole transaction.

A day's work is a day's work, neither more nor less, and the man or woman who does it needs a day's sustenance, a night's repose and due leisure, whether they be painter or ploughman.

To the person with a toothache, even if the world is tottering, there is nothing more important than a visit to a dentist.

God is on the side of the big battalions.

Bible worship, though at its best it may achieve sublimity by keeping its head in the skies, may also make itself both ridiculousand dangerous by having its feet off the ground.

Whenever I see the word Operation, especially Trifling Operation, I at once write off the patient as dead.

I have not wasted my life trifling with literary fools in taverns, as Johnson did, when he should have been shaking England with the thunder of his spirit.

Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one's heart; but death is a splendid thing -a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.

You're only a beginner; and what you think is love, and interest, and all that, is not real love at all: three quarters of it is only unsatisfied curiosity.

People exaggerate the value of things they haven't got everybody worships truth and unselfishness because they have no experience with them.

Marriage is to me apostasy, profanation of the sanctuary of my soul, violation of my manhood, sale of my birthright, shameful surrender, ignominious capitulation, acceptance of defeat.

Property, said Proudhon, is theft. This is the only perfect truism that has been uttered on the subject.

There is a terrible truthfulness about photography that sometimes makes a thing look ridiculous.

Jesus remains unshaken as the practical man; and we stand exposed as the fools, the blunderers, the unpractical visionaries.

Emotional excitement reaches men through tea, tobacco, opium, whisky, and religion.

The way to deal with worldly people is to frighten them by repeating their scandalous whisperings aloud.

I was always unlawful; I broke the law when I was born because my parents weren't married.

Crime is only the retail department of what, in wholesale, we call penal law.

Medical science is as yet very imperfectly differentiated from common cure-mongering witchcraft.

In an article on Bunyan lately published in the Contemporary Review -- the only article on the subject worth reading on the subject I ever saw (yes, thank you, I am familiar with Macaulay's patronizing prattle about The Pilgrim's Progress) etc.

Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.

The American Constitution, one of the few modern political documents drawn up by men who were forced by the sternest circumstances to think out what they really had to face, instead of chopping logic in a university classroom.

I work as my father drank.

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 the state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.

A moderately honest man with a moderately faithful wife, moderate drinkers both, in a moderately healthy house: that is the true middle class unit.

We throw the whole drudgery of creation on one sex, and then imply that no female of any delicacy would initiate any effort in that direction.

Well, upon my soul! You are not ashamed to stand there and confess yourself a disgusting drunkard.

Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parent.

Dancing: the vertical expression of a horizontal desire legalized by music.

The function of the actor is to make the audience imagine for the moment that real things are happening to real people.

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

It is easy -- terribly easy -- to shake a man's faith in himself. To take advantage of that to break a man's spirit is devil's work.

The novelties of one generation are only the resuscitated fashions of the generation before last.

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild' is a snivelling modern invention, with no warrant in the gospels.

If we women were particular about men's characters, we should never get married at all.

I don't know if there are men on the moon, but if there are they must be using the earth as their lunatic asylum.

I have found, after a good deal of consideration, that the best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for Him here.

A doctor's reputation is made by the number of eminent men who die under his care.

The doctor learns that if he gets ahead of the superstitions of his patients he is a ruined man; and the result is that he instinctively takes care not to get ahead of them.

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.

Now that we have learned to fly the air like birds, swim under water like fish, we lack one thing -- to learn to live on earth as human beings.

Audacious ribald: your laughter will finish in hideous boredom before morning.

Make money and the whole nation will conspire to call you a gentleman.

'I am a brigand: I live by robbing the rich.' 'I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor.'

There is nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school.

Go anywhere in England where there are natural wholesome, contented and really nice English people; and what do you find? That the stables are the real centre of the household.

If a woman rebels against high-heeled shoes, she should take care to do it in a very smart hat.

The real pleasure of one's life is the devotion to a great objective of one's consideration.

If you eliminate smoking and gambling, you will be amazed to find that almost all an Englishman's pleasures can be, and mostly are, shared by his dog.

I fought linotype and montype for some time because it would not justify as well as handset could be made to do; but at last, as always happens, the machine outdid the hand, and got all the best types on it.

Consistency is the enemy of enterprise, just as symmetry is the enemy of art.

Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice.

A photographer is like a cod, which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity.

If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself.

The only time my education was interrupted was when I was in school.

Whisky is liquid sunshine.

My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.

A cigarette is a pinch of tobacco rolled in paper with fire at one end and a fool at the other.

After all, the wrong road always leads somewhere.

Don't wait for the right opportunity: create it.

The greatest fallacy with communication, is the belief that it has actually occurred.

It's a dangerous thing to be married right up to the hilt, like my daughter's husband. The man is at home all day, like a damned soul in hell.

Gardening is the only unquestionably useful job.

All progress means war with society.

Grain by grain, a loaf. Stone upon stone, a palace.

Life is a flame that is always burning itself out; but it catches fire again every time a child is born. Life is greater than death, and hope than despair.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.

We know there is intention and purpose in the universe, because there is intention and purpose in us.

All genuinely intellectual work is humorous.

Any man who is not a communist at the age of twenty is a fool. Any man who is still a communist at the age of thirty is an even bigger fool.

The sound body is the product of the sound mind.

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

Any belief worth having must survive doubt.

When the world goes mad, one must accept madness as sanity; since sanity is, in the last analysis, nothing but the madness on which the whole world happens to agree.

When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.

Security, the chief pretense of civilization, cannot exist where the worst of dangers, the danger of poverty, hangs over everyone's head.

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

A man learns to skate by staggering about and making a fool of himself. Indeed he progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself.

The churches must learn humility as well as teach it.

What you are to do without me I cannot imagine.

Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.

Nobody can say a word against Greek: it stamps a man at once as an educated gentlemen.

The Indian way of life provides the vision of the natural, real way of life. We veil ourselves with unnatural masks. On the face of India are the tender expressions which carry the mark of the Creators hand.

Eternal is the fact that the human creature born in Ireland and brought up in its air is Irish. I have lived for twenty years in Ireland and for seventy-two in England; but the twenty came first and in Britain I am still a foreigner and shall die one.

Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him.

Altogether too many sheep.

My rank is the highest known in Switzerland: I'm a free citizen.

What use are cartridges in battle? I always carry chocolate instead.