George Bernard Shaw Quotes on Man (79 Quotes)


    Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

    Pickering Have you no morals, man Doolittle Can't afford them, Governor.



    I like a bit of a mongrel myself, whether its a man or a dog. Theyre the best for every day.


    I talk democracy to these men and women. I tell them that they have the vote, and that theirs is the kingdom and the power and the glory. I say to them You are supreme exercise your power. They say, That's right tell us what to do and I tell t.

    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.


    My situation is a solemn one. Life is offered to me on condition of eating beefsteaks. But death is better than cannibalism. My will contains directions for my funeral, which will be followed not by mourning coaches, but by oxen, sheep, flocks of poultry, and a small traveling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarf's in honor of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow creatures.

    The ordinary man is an anarchist. He wants to do as he likes. He may want his neighbour to be governed, but he himself doesn't want to be governed. He is mortally afraid of government officials and policemen.


    Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion. When they refuse to be governed by law or persuasion, they have to be governed by force or fraud, or both.

    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.

    The surest way to ruin a man who doesn't know how to handle money is to give him some.

    The Jews generally give value. They make you pay but they deliver the goods. In my experience the men who want something for nothing are invariably Christians.

    Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

    Give a man health and a course to steer, and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not.

    The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not a man of honor

    Religion is a great force - the only real motive force in the world but you must get a man through his own religion, not through yours.

    The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.

    A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.



    Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.

    What God hath joined together no man shall ever put asunder God will take care of that.

    When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

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

    Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and calves and that men and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock.


    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.

    The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her.

    Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

    Man is unique in that he has plans, purpose and goals which require the need for criteria of choice. The need for ethical value is within man whose future may largely be determined by the choice he make

    The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.


    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.

    This creative man, who in his own selfish affairs is a coward to the backbone, will fight for an idea like a hero.

    You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living.

    What a man is depends on his character but what he does, and what we think of what he does, depends on his circumstances.

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

    When it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones.

    Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

    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.


    If women were as fastidious as men, morally or physically, there would be an end of the race.



    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.

    Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

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


    More George Bernard Shaw Quotations (Based on Topics)


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