George Bernard Shaw Quotes (675 Quotes)

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

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

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

Life is not meant to be easy, my child, But take courage, It can be delightful.

We dont bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we dont dress well and weve got no manners.

Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn't be anything for us to do.

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.

If you strike a child, take care that you strike it in anger, even at the risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neither can nor should be forgiven.

The mathematician is fascinated with the marvelous beauty of the forms he constructs, and in their beauty he finds everlasting truth.

Nobel prize money is a life-belt thrown to a swimmer who has already reached the shore in safety

We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies.

Gardening is the only unquestionably useful job.

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

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

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

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

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

I never expect a soldier to think.

Life on board a pleasure steamer violates every moral and physical condition of healthy life except fresh air. . . . It is a guzzling, lounging, gambling, dog's life. The only alternative to excitement is irritability.

Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.

It is easy terribly easy to shake a mans faith in himself. To take advantage of that to break a mans spirit is devils work.

The frontier between hell and heaven is only the difference between two ways of looking at things.

I'm only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler.

Suppose the world were only one of God's jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one.

If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance.

It is not disbelief that is dangerous to our society it is belief.

The roulette table pays nobody except him who keeps it. Nevertheless, a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette wheels is unknown.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live.

Sister, you're trying to keep me alive as an old curiosity, but I'm done, I'm finished, I'm going to die. Spoken to his nurse.

We have not lost faith, but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession.

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

Heaven, as conventionally conceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable, that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty of people have described a day at the seaside.

Nothing can be unconditional consequently nothing can be free.

You are a very poor soldier a chocolate cream soldier.

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

We veneer civilization by doing unkind things in a kind way

The notion that disarmament can put a stop to war is contradicted by the nearest dogfight.

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.

Don't think you can frighten me by telling me I am alone. France is alone and God is alone and what is my loneliness before the loneliness of my country and my God.

Democracy means the organization of society for the benefit and at the expense of everybody indiscriminately and not for the benefit of a privileged class.

The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.

I hate, performers who debase great works of art I long for their annihilation.

Critics, like other people, see what they look for, not what is actually before them.

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

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

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

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

Better never than late.