George Bernard Shaw – 116 Quotes

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116 Quotes by George Bernard Shaw

The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.

– 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

A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.

– George Bernard Shaw

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

– 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 secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.

– George Bernard Shaw

Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.

– 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

Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.

– George Bernard Shaw

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

– George Bernard Shaw

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

– 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

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

– George Bernard Shaw

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.

– George Bernard Shaw

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

– George Bernard Shaw

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

– George Bernard Shaw

You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

– George Bernard Shaw

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

– 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

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

– George Bernard Shaw

Lack of money is the root of all evil.

– George Bernard Shaw

We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.

– George Bernard Shaw

When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn’t got any.

– George Bernard Shaw

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

– George Bernard Shaw

Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability.

– 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

If women were particular about men’s characters, they would never get married at all.

– George Bernard Shaw

Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

– George Bernard Shaw

Power does not corrupt men fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

– 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

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

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

There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.

– George Bernard Shaw

Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.

– George Bernard Shaw

It is most unwise for people in love to marry.

– George Bernard Shaw

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

– George Bernard Shaw

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.

– George Bernard Shaw

The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.

– George Bernard Shaw

Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.

– 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

Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.

– George Bernard Shaw

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

– George Bernard Shaw

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

– 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

Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire the other is to get it.

– 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

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

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

Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles.

– 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

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

Beware of false knowledge it is more dangerous than ignorance.

– 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

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

It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.

– George Bernard Shaw

I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.

– 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

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.

– George Bernard Shaw

Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

– 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

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

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

Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.

– George Bernard Shaw

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

– 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

An index is a great leveller.

– George Bernard Shaw

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

– George Bernard Shaw

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

– George Bernard Shaw

The great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life.

– George Bernard Shaw

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

– George Bernard Shaw

It’s easier to replace a dead man than a good picture.

– George Bernard Shaw

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

– George Bernard Shaw

Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.

– George Bernard Shaw

I’m an atheist and I thank God for it.

– George Bernard Shaw

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

– George Bernard Shaw

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

– 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

There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

– George Bernard Shaw

Animals are my friends… and I don’t eat my friends.

– George Bernard Shaw

Oh, the tiger will love you. There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

– George Bernard Shaw

Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.

– 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

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

Martyrdom: The only way a man can become famous without ability.

– George Bernard Shaw

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.

– George Bernard Shaw

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

– 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

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

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

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

– George Bernard Shaw

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

– George Bernard Shaw

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

– George Bernard Shaw

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

– George Bernard Shaw

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

– 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

A man of great common sense and good taste – meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

– 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

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 single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

– George Bernard Shaw

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

– 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

If all the economists were laid end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion.

– George Bernard Shaw

The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.

– George Bernard Shaw

The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

– 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

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

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

– 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

The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.

– George Bernard Shaw

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

– George Bernard Shaw

You use a glass mirror to see your face you use works of art to see your soul.

– George Bernard Shaw

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

– 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

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

– George Bernard Shaw