George Bernard Shaw Quotes (675 Quotes)

If the English can survive their food, they can survive anything.

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.

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

Success covers a multitude of blunders.

The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living as seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.

Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity, and beauty as conspicuously as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness, and ugliness.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.

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

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

Don't order any black things. Rejoice in his memory and be radiant leave grief to the children. Wear violet and purple. Be patient with the poor people who will snivel they don't know and they think they will live for ever, which makes death a division instead of a bond.

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

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

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

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

Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes.

Well, sir, you never can tell. Thats a principle in life with me, sir, if youll excuse my having such a thing.

No sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on it legs again in the name of Jesus.

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

When commenting on the turmoil and disorder of the world, If the other planets are inhabited, they must be using this earth as their insane asylum.

The greatest evils and the worst of crimes is poverty our first duty, a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor.

Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and youre driving at another.

As an old soldier, I admit the cowardice its as universal as seasickness, and matters just as little.

We must all share in the evils of the world or move to another planet.

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

You think that you are Anns suitor that you are the pursuer and she the pursued that it is your part to woo, to persuade, to prevail, to overcome. Fool it is you who are the pursued, the marked-down quarry, the destined prey.

It does not follow . . . that the right to criticize Shakespeare involves the power of writing better plays. And in fact . . . I do not profess to write better plays.

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

The statesman cannot govern without stability of belief, true or false.

What the world calls originality is only an unaccustomed method of tickling it.

Artists do not prove things. They do not need to. They know them.

Crude classifications and false generalizations are the curse of the organized life.

Imprisonment is as irrevocable as death.

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

England and America are two countries divided by a common language.

The utmost I can bear for myself in my best days is that I was one of the hundred best playwrights in the world, which is hardly a supreme distinction.

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.

The American Constitution, one of the few modern political documents drawn up by men who were forced by the sternest circumstances to think out what they really had to face, instead of chopping logic in a university classroom.

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say I know instead of I am learning, and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for scepticism and activity.

The worst cliques are those which consist of one man.

The only power a god can teach is the power of doing without happiness.

Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible and don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon.

I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me I'm not fit to sell anything else.

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

All religions begin with a revolt against morality, and perish when morality conquers them.

To withhold deserved praise lest it should make its object conceited is as dishonest as to withhold payment of a just debt lest your creditor should spend the money badly.

Our necessities are few, but our wants are endless.

When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.

Between persons of equal income there is no social distinction except the distinction of merit. Money is nothing character, conduct, and capacity are everything. . .

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.