George Bernard Shaw Quotes

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

“Think what cowards men would be if they had to bear children. Women are altogether a superior species.”

“Laws, religions, creeds, and systems of ethics, instead of making society better than its best unit, make it worse than its average unit, because they are never up to date.”

“If you demand my authorities for this and that, I must reply that only those who have never hunted up the authorities as I have believe that there is any authority who is not contradicted flatly by some other authority.”

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

“We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.”

“There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.”

“We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

“I must have been an insufferable child; all children are.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it.”

“Democracy means the organization of society for the benefit and at the expense of everybody indiscriminately and not for the benefit of a privileged class.”

“What we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real.”

“The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization. Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty . . . . Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys basic people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people.”

“The righteous man takes his life in his hand whenever he utters the truth.”

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

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

“Modern poverty is not the poverty that was blest in the Sermon on the Mount.”

“Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice”

“NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Giuseppe? Everything he says is wrong. GIUSEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says will be right.”

“There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.”

“The American white relegates the black to the rank of shoeshine boy; and he concludes from this that the black is good for nothing but shining shoes.”

“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.”

“There may be some doubt as to who are the best people to have charge of children, but there can be no doubt that parents are the worst.”