Bernard Quotes

In the philosophic sense, observation shows and experiment teaches.

The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist

I'm sick of all the reasonable people: they see all the reasons for doing nothing

Women are called womanly only when they regard themselves as existing solely for the use of men.

Nothing remains beautiful and interesting except thought, because the thought is the life.

Every man deserves to be judged in the context of his times.

The greatest thing in life is to die young - but delay it as long as possible.

I do not know what I think until I write it.

Youth is just wasted on young people.

Start with the belief that your life can indeed be changed, and that you have the power to change it.

All progress is due to the unreasonable person.

Remember that I too am mortal.

When men die of disease they are said to die from natural causes. When they recover (and mostly they do) the doctor gets the credit of curing them.

Altogether too many sheep

God made the world as an artist and that is why the world must learn from its artists.

Two people getting together to write a book is like three people getting together to have a baby. One of them is superfluous.

Money enables us to get what we want instead of what other people think we want.

[Man] progresses in all things by making a fool of himself.

When you prevent me from doing anything I want to do, that is persecution; when I prevent you from doing anything you want to do, that is law, order, and morals.

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

If there is anything I hate in a woman, it's want of character.

The reasonable man will adjust to the demands of his environment. The unreasonable man expects his environment to adjust to his own needs. Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.

The buried truth germinates and breaks through to the light.

He who desires a lifetime of happiness with a beautiful woman desires to enjoy the taste of wine by keeping his mouth always full of it.

Fine art is the only teacher except torture.

Though the Life Force supplies us with its own purpose, it has no other brains to work with than those it has painfully and imperfectly evolved in our heads.

Religion is a good invention in times of stress.

All autobiographies are lies. I do not mean unconscious, unintentional lies: I mean deliberate lies.

I become more convinced that beings from other planets are using the Earth as a lunatic asylum

I learned more from the first stupid woman who fell in love with me than ever my brains taught me.

A married man is a man with a past, while a bachelor is a man with a future.

The great dramatist has something better to do than to amuse either himself or his audience. He has to interpret life.

The trouble with the media is that it seems unable to distinguish between the end of the world and a bicycle accident.

Reviewing has one advantage over suicide: in suicide you take it out on yourself; in reviewing you take it out on other people.

I loathe the mess of mean superstitions and misunderstood prophecies which is still rammed down the throats of children under the name of Christianity.

As people get their opinions so largely from the newspapers they read... But the Press is not free, the newspapers are owned by rich men.

There is nothing in religion but fiction.

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

We all go about longing for love: it is the first need of our natures, the loudest cry of our hearts.

The way to deal with worldly people is to frighten them by repeating their scandalous whisperings aloud.

There is the eternal war between those who are in the world for what they can get out of it and those who are in the world to make it a better place for everybody to live in.

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

Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.

A man is like a phonograph with half-a-dozen records. You soon get tired of them all; and yet you have to sit at table whilst he reels them off to every new visitor.

A critic is one who leaves no turn unstoned.

A child hasn't a grown-up person's appetite for affection. A little of it goes a long way with them; and they like a good imitation of it better than the real thing, as every nurse knows.

Not everybody is strong enough to endure life without an anesthetic. Drink probably averts more gross crime than it causes.

The price of ability does not depend on merit but on supply and demand.

A serious illness or a death advertises the doctor exactly as a hanging advertises the barrister who defended the person hanged.

Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound, or smell of it