George Bernard Shaw Quotes (675 Quotes)

The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.

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

The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone, the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood.

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.

You are all fundamentalists with a top dressing of science. That is why you are the stupidest of conservatives and reactionists in politics and the most bigoted of obstructionists in science itself.

I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.

I am sure that if people had to choose between living where the noise of children never stopped and where it was never heard, all the good-natured and sound people would prefer the incessant noise to the incessant silence.

It is the sexless novel that should be distinguished the sex novel is now normal.

We throw the whole drudgery of creation one sex, and then imply that no female of any delicacy would initiate any effort in that direction

It would positively be a relief to me to dig him up and throw stones at him.

No American newspaper will print anything contrary to its own interests

Even the fact that doctors themselves die of the very diseases they profess to cure passes unnoticed. We do not shoot out our lips and shake our heads, saying, 'They save others themselves they cannot save'

Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.

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

The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.

He who slays a king and He who dies for him are alike idolaters.

The most tragic thing in the world is a sick doctor.

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

Every unnatural activity of the brain is as mischievous as any unnatural activity of the body and that pressing people to learn things they do not want to know is as unwholesome and disastrous as feeding them on sawdust.

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.

They all thought she was dead but my father he kept ladling gin down her throat till she came to so sudden that she bit the bowl off the spoon.

The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.

Hamlet's experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber.

(Democracy is a government) of the fools, for the fools, by the fools.

When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.

When you read a biography remember that the truth is never fit for publication.

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.

Property is organized robbery.

We sing in a church, why can we not dance there.

We must be thoroughly democratic and patronise everybody without distinction of class.

We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence... on pain of liquidation.

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.

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

Its all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.

It is a woman's business to get married as soon as possible, and a man's to keep unmarried as long as he can.

I am a Christian. That obliges me to be a Communist.

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in short, is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

Never forget that two blacks do not make a white.

What use are cartridges in battle I always carry chocolate instead

He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

In your Salvation shelter I saw poverty, misery, cold and hunger. You gave them bread and treacle and dreams of heaven. I give from thirty shillings a week to twelve thousand a year. They find their own dreams but I look after the drainage.

Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!

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

Taste a quality possessed by persons without originality or moral courage.

Hell is full of musical amateurs music is the brandy of the damned.

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.