George Bernard Shaw Quotes (675 Quotes)

Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty; what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.

Nobody can say a word against Greek it stamps a man at once as an educated gentleman.

If parents would only realize how they bore their children.

If you injure your neighbour, better not do it by halves.

Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites.

It is only natural that a man should have established friendly relationship with the wives of his friends, but if he is wise he quits all ideas of sex out of the question.

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

Vice is waste of life. Poverty, obedience, and celibacy Are the canonical vices.

In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.

Grain by grain -- a loaf stone by stone -- a palace.

The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.

Criminals do not die by the hands of the law they die by the hands of other men.

My friend, when a man has anything to tell in this world, the difficulty is not to make him tell it, but to prevent him from telling it too often.

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.

I began as a passion and ended as a habit, like all husbands.

The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.

If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentlemen, he may pronounce as he pleases.

This is the true joy in life being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

The Indian way of life provides the vision of the natural, real way of life. We veil ourselves with unnatural masks. On the face of India are the tender expressions which carry the mark of the Creator's hand. In the face of an Indian, you can see the natural glory of life, while we have covered ourselves with an artificial cloak.

A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.

In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.

I feel nothing but the accursed happiness I have dreaded all my life long the happiness that comes as life goes, the happiness of yielding and dreaming instead of resisting and doing, the sweetness of the fruit that is going rotten.

Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.

Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles.

Education can and should do much influence social, moral and intellectual discovery by stimulating critical attitudes of thought in the young

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

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

When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.

New opinions often appear first as jokes and fancies, then as blasphemies and treason, then as questions open to discussion, and finally as established truths.

Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich -- something for nothing.

No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.

The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity.

Woman's dearest delight is to wound Man's self-conceit, though Man's dearest delight is to gratify hers

You can easily find people who are ten times as rich at sixty as they were at twenty but not one of them will tell you that they are ten times as happy

When a prisoner sees the door of his dungeon open he dashes for it without stopping to think where he shall get his dinner.

Orchestras only need to be sworn at, and a German is consequently at an advantage with them, as English profanity, except in America, has not gone beyond a limited technology of perdition.

The real Brahms is nothing more than a sentimental voluptuary. ... rather tiresomely addicted to dressing himself up as Handel or Beethoven and making a prolonged and intolerable noise.

I make a fortune from criticizing the policy of the government, and then hand it over to the government in taxes to keep it going.

Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.

There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles he robs you on business principles he enslaves you on imperial principles.

Revolutionary movements attract the best and worst elements in a given society.

Even the youngest of us may be wrong sometimes.

Where there is no religion, hypocrisy becomes good taste.

Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination.

He didn't dare to, because his father had a weak heart and habitually threatened to drop dead if anybody hurt his feelings. You may have noticed that people with weak hearts are the tyrants of English married life.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature

Kings are not born they are made by universal hallucination

If you go to Heaven without being naturally qualified for it you will not enjoy yourself there.