George Bernard Shaw Quotes & Sayings

Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannot endure it. Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life. — George Bernard Shaw

Your heart and your mouth wil be in two separate parts of your body if you again forget in whose presence you stand. — George Bernard Shaw

Better see rightly on a pound a week than squint on a million. — George Bernard Shaw

What God hath joined together no man shall put asunder: God will take care of that. — George Bernard Shaw

I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend ... if you have one."
- George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill)
"Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one."
- Churchill's response — George Bernard Shaw

No child should be brought up to suppose that its food and clothes come down from heaven or are miraculously conjured from empty space by papa. Loathsome as we have made the idea of duty (like the idea of work) we must habituate children to a sense of repayable obligation to the community for what they consume and enjoy, and inculcate the repayment as a point of honor. — George Bernard Shaw

It is in the hour of trial that a man finds his true profession. — George Bernard Shaw

I have never sneered in my life. Sneering doesn't become either the human face or the human soul. I am expressing my righteous contempt for Commercialism. I don't and wont trade in affection. You call me a brute because you couldn't buy a claim on me by fetching my slippers and finding my spectacles. You were a fool: I think a woman fetching a man's slippers is a disgusting sight: did I ever fetch your slippers? I think a good deal more of you for throwing them in my face. No use slaving for me and then saying you want to be cared for: who cares for a slave? — George Bernard Shaw

Who are those we love? Only those we do not hate. — George Bernard Shaw

Just as I cannot remember any time when I could not read and write, I cannot remember any time when I did not exercise my imagination in daydreams about women. — George Bernard Shaw

The vital force that drives men to throw away their lives and those of others in the pursuit of an imaginative impulse, reckless of its apparent effect on human welfare, is, like all natural forces, given to us in enormous excess to provide against an enormous waste. Therefore men, instead of economizing it by consecrating it to the service of their highest impulses, grasp at a phrase in a newspaper article, or in the speech of a politician on a vote-catching expedition, as an excuse for exercising it violently, just as a horse turned out to grass will gallop and kick merely to let off steam. The shallowness of the ideals of men ignorant of history is their destruction. — George Bernard Shaw

The medieval doctors of divinity who did not pretend to settle how many angels could dance on the point of a needle cut a very poor figure as far as romantic credulity is concerned beside the modern physicists who have settled to the billionth of a millimetre every movement and position in the dance of the electrons. Not for worlds would I question the precise accuracy of these calculations or the existence of electrons (whatever they may be). The fate of Joan is a warning to me against such heresy. — George Bernard Shaw

Emotional excitement reaches men through tea, tobacco, opium, whisky, and religion. — George Bernard Shaw

That is what all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud; and the world overhears them — George Bernard Shaw

He who bears the brand of Cain shall rule the earth. — George Bernard Shaw

Activity is the only road to knowledge. — George Bernard Shaw

No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious. — George Bernard Shaw

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad. — George Bernard Shaw

I am giving you examples of the fact that this creature man, who in his own selfish affairs is a coward to the backbone, will fight for an idea like a hero ... I tell you, gentlemen, if you can shew a man a piece of what he now calls God's work to do, and what he will later call by many new names, you can make him entirely reckless of the consequences to himself personally. — George Bernard Shaw

A newspaper, not having to act on its descriptions and reports, but only to sell them to idly curious people, has nothing but honor to lose by inaccuracy and non-veracity. — George Bernard Shaw

It is nearly 50 years since I was assured by a conclave of doctors that if I did not eat meat I should die of starvation. — George Bernard Shaw

Vital art comes always from a cross between art and life: art being of one sex only, and quite sterile by itself. Such a cross is always possible; for though the artist may not have the capacity to bring his art into contact with the higher life of his time; fermenting in its religion, its philosophy, its science, and its statesmanship (perhaps indeed their may not be any statesmanship going), he can at least bring it into contact with the obvious life and common passions of the streets. 362 — George Bernard Shaw

What is both surprising and delightful is that the spectators are allowed, and even expected, to join in the vocal part of the game ... There is no reason why the field should not try to put the batsman off his stroke at the critical moment by neatly timed disparagements of his wife's fidelity and his mother's respectability. — George Bernard Shaw

We learn from history that we learn nothing from history. — George Bernard Shaw

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

Nationalism must now be added to the refuse pile of superstitions. We are now citizens of the world, and the man who divides the race into elect Irishmen and reprobate foreign devils (especially Englishmen) had better live on the Blaskets where he can admire himself without disturbance. — George Bernard Shaw

Communism, being the lay form of Catholicism, and indeed meaning the same thing, has never had any lack of chaplains. — George Bernard Shaw

No community has ever yet passed beyond the initial phases in which its pugnacity and fanaticism enabled it to found a nation, and its cupidity to establish and develop a commercial civilization. — George Bernard Shaw

Morality consists of suspecting other people of not being legally married. — George Bernard Shaw

From Mozart I learnt to say important things in a conversational way. — George Bernard Shaw

Martyrdom is the only path to immortality that requires no talent whatsoever. — George Bernard Shaw

I sing, not arms and the hero, but the philosophic man: he who seeks in contemplation to discover the inner will of the world, ininvention to discover the means of fulfilling that will, and in action to do that will by the so-discovered means. — George Bernard Shaw

I like to quote myself frequently and often, it makes me sound much more intelligent than I actually am. — George Bernard Shaw

Wicked people means people who have no love: therefore, they have no shame. They have the power to ask love because the don't need it: they have the power to offer it because they have none to give. — George Bernard Shaw

Schools must not become the agencies through which propaganda advocated by any section of society is spread. The method of control always a crucial problem should be in harmony with the fundamental values and principles of the states and the entire e — George Bernard Shaw

When you find something funny search it for hidden truth. — George Bernard Shaw

Don't ask me for promises until I know what I am promising. — George Bernard Shaw

Unless comedy touches me as well as amuses me, it leaves me with a sense of having wasted my evening. I go to the theatre to be moved to laughter, not to be tickled or bustled into it. — George Bernard Shaw

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. — George Bernard Shaw

I'm not a teacher: only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead - ahead of myself as well as you. — George Bernard Shaw

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

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. — George Bernard Shaw

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them. — George Bernard Shaw

There is at bottom only one genuinely scientific treatment for all diseases, and that is to stimulate the phagocytes. — George Bernard Shaw

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell. — George Bernard Shaw

I prefer the man who calls his nonsense a mystery to him who who pretends it is a weighed, measured, analyzed fact. — George Bernard Shaw

A married man is a man with a past, while a bachelor is a man with a future. — George Bernard Shaw

It is well to be off with the old woman before you're on with the new. — George Bernard Shaw

It's all a matter of habit. There's no right or wrong in it. Nobody means anything by it. And it's so quaint, and gives such a smart emphasis to things that are not in themselves very witty. I find the new small talk delightful and quite innocent. — George Bernard Shaw

What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car? — George Bernard Shaw

We have in England a curious belief in first-rate people, meaning all the people we do not know; and this consoles us for the undeniable second-rateness of the people we do know. — George Bernard Shaw

The more ignorant men are, the more convinced are they that their little parish and their little chapel is an apex to which civilization and philosophy has painfully struggled up the pyramid of time from a desert of savagery. — George Bernard Shaw

Some men see things as they are, and say, why; I dream things as they never were, and say, why not. — George Bernard Shaw

I believe in the discipline of silence, and could talk for hours about it. — George Bernard Shaw

I believe in Michelangelo, Velasquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by Beauty everlasting, and the message of Art that has made these hands blessed. Amen. Amen. — George Bernard Shaw

Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble?Making life means making
trouble. There's only one way of escaping trouble; and that's killing things. — George Bernard Shaw

The goal of an artist is to create the definitive work that cannot be surpassed. — George Bernard Shaw

If you lived in London, where the whole system is one of false good-fellowship, and you may know a man for twenty years without finding out that he hates you like poison, you would soon have your eyes opened. There we do unkind things in a kind way: we say bitter things in a sweet voice: we always give our friends chloroform when we tear them to pieces. — George Bernard Shaw

That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms. — George Bernard Shaw

Nietzche ... he was a confirmed Life Force worshipper. It was he who raked up the Superman, who is as old as Prometheus; and the 20th century will run after this newest of the old crazes when it gets tired of the world, the flesh, and your humble servant. — George Bernard Shaw

The heretic is always better dead. And mortal eyes cannot distinguish the saint from the heretic. — George Bernard Shaw

Man's inhumanity to man is only surpassed by his cruelty to animals — George Bernard Shaw

A socialist is somebody who doesn't have anything, and is ready to divide it up equally among everybody. — 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. — George Bernard Shaw

Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them. — George Bernard Shaw

The love of economy is the root of all virtue. — George Bernard Shaw

Absolute honesty is as absurd an abstraction as an absolute temperature or an absolute value. — 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

Under Socialism, you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you liked it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live, you would have to live well. — George Bernard Shaw

To withhold deserved praise lest it should make its object conceited is as dishonest as to withhold payment of a just debt lest your creditor should spend the money badly. — George Bernard Shaw

In your dread of dictators you established a state of society in which every ward boss is a dictator, every financier a dictator, every private employer a dictator, all with the livelihood of the workers at their mercy, and no public responsibility. And to symbolize this state of things, this defeat of all government, you have set up in New York Harbour a monstrous idol which you call Liberty. The only thing that remains to complete this monument is to put on its pedestal the inscription written by Dante on the gate of Hell 'All hope abandon, ye who enter here. — George Bernard Shaw

The cinema is going to form the mind of England. The national conscience, the national ideals and tests of conduct, will be those of the film. — George Bernard Shaw

I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could. — George Bernard Shaw

A dinner! How horrible! I am to be made the pretext for killing all those wretched animals and birds, and fish! Thank you for nothing. Now if it were to be a fast instead of a feast; say a solemn three days' abstention from corpses in my honour, I could at least pretend to believe that it was disinterested. Blood sacrifices are not in my line — George Bernard Shaw

Love is a simple thing and a deep thing: it is an act of life and not an illusion. Art is an illusion. — George Bernard Shaw

I was taught when I was young that if people would only love one another, all would be well with the world. I found when I tried to put that into practice, not only were other people seldom lovable but I wasn't very lovable myself. — George Bernard Shaw

Science is always simple and always profound. It is only the half-truths that are dangerous. — George Bernard Shaw

Malone: Me father died of starvation in Ireland in the black 47. Maybe you've heard of it.
Violet: The Famine?
Malone: No, the starvation. When a country is full o food, and exporting it, there can be no famine. — George Bernard Shaw

All industries are brought under the control of such people [film producers] by Capitalism. If the capitalists let themselves be seduced from their pursuit of profits to the enchantments of art, they would be bankrupt before they knew where they were. You cannot combine the pursuit of money with the pursuit of art. — George Bernard Shaw

An index is a great leveller. — George Bernard Shaw

In heaven an angel is no one in particular. — George Bernard Shaw

The world was to Shakespeare a great stage of fools on which he was utterly bewildered. His pregnant observations of life are not coordinated into any philosophy. — George Bernard Shaw

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. — George Bernard Shaw

O Lord! I don't know which is the worst of the country, the walking or the sitting at home with nothing to do. — George Bernard Shaw

People expect too much of one year and too little of ten. — George Bernard Shaw

Two people getting together to write a book is like three people getting together to have a baby. One of them is superfluous. — George Bernard Shaw

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

There is the eternal war between those who are in the world for what they can get out of it and those who are in the world to make it a better place for everybody to live in. — George Bernard Shaw

Imprisonment is as irrevocable as death. — George Bernard Shaw

Sexually,Woman is Nature's contrivance for perpetuating its highest achievement. — George Bernard Shaw

If all the statisticians in the world were laid head to toe, they wouldn't be able to reach a conclusion — George Bernard Shaw

The technical history of modern harmony is a history of growth of toleration by the human ear of chords that at first sounded discordant and senseless to the main body of contemporary professional musicians. — George Bernard Shaw

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that 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

If more than 10% of the people like a painting, you can be sure it's bad. — George Bernard Shaw

Colonel Hugh Pickering - Well, I'm dashed! — George Bernard Shaw

The person who is ignorant enough to believe that his nourishment depends on meat is in a horrible dilemma. — George Bernard Shaw

Altogether too many sheep — George Bernard Shaw

If a woman can by careful selection of a father, and nourishment of herself produce a citizen with efficient senses, sound organs and a good digestion, she should clearly be secured a sufficient reward for that natural service to make her willing to undertake and repeat it. Whether she be financed in the undertaking by herself, or by the father, of by a speculative capitalist, or by a new department of , say, the Royal Dublin Society, or (as at present) by the War Office maintaining her 'on the strength' and authority under a by-law directing that women may under certain circumstances have a year's leave of absence on full salary, or by the central government, does not matter provided the results be satisfactory. — 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