George Bernard Shaw Quotes

I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.

I'm only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler; I don't like beer.

The harder I work the more I live.

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

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.

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

To the person with a toothache, even if the world is tottering, there is nothing more important than a visit to a dentist.

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

The longer I live, the more convinced am I that this planet is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum.

Tradition will accustom people to any atrocity

The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown.

How can what an Englishman believes be hearsay? It is a contradiction in terms.

The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.

Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research.

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.

Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.

Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.

Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

It is not disbelief that is dangerous to our society; it is belief.

Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it...

There is not one single established religion that an intelligent, educated man can believe.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open.

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

If 'Pygmalion' is not good enough for your friends with its own verbal music, their talent must be altogether extraordinary.

The only person who acts sensibly is my tailor. He takes my measure anew every time he sees me. Everyone else goes by their old measurements.

I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

If there was twenty ways of telling the truth and only one way of telling a lie, the Government would find it out. It's in the nature of governments to tell lies.

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

I believe in the discipline of silence, and could talk for hours about it.

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

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

A soldier is an anachronism of which we must get rid.

Lack of money is the root of of all evil.

A learned man is an idler who kills time by study.

Find enough clever things to say, and you're a Prime Minister; write them down and you're a Shakespeare.

There are only two classes in good society in England: the equestrian classes and the neurotic classes.

It is not enough to know what is good: you must be able to do it.

All evolution in thought and conduct must at first appear as heresy and misconduct.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

In a hospital they throw you out into the street before you are half cured, but in a nursing home they don't let you out till you are dead.

A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.

Any sort of plain speaking is better than the nauseous sham good fellowship our democratic public men get up for shop use.