George Bernard Shaw Quotes (675 Quotes)

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

We're from Madeira, but perfectly respectable, so far.

It's so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

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

The most revolutionary invention of the Nineteenth Century was the artificial sterilization of marriage.

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

Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing Age, which forgives itself anything, is forgiven nothing.

An Irishman's heart is nothing but his imagination.

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.

When I was a young man I observed that nine out of every ten things I did were failures. I didn't want to be a failure. So I did ten times more work.

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.

The churches must learn humility as well as teach it.

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

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.

He never does a proper thing without giving an improper reason for it.

A man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows. . .

He who has nothing to assert has no style and can have none he who has something to assert will go as far in power of style as its momentousness and his conviction will carry him.

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

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

I tell you that as long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it in to existence or clearing the way for it.

The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.

What I say today everybody will say tomorrow, though they will not remember who put it into their heads. Indeed they will be right for I never remember who puts things into my head it is the Zeitgeist.

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

The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.