George Bernard Shaw Quotes

“It is clear that a novel cannot be too bad to be worth publishing. . . . It certainly is possible for a novel to be too good to be worth publishing.”

“Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones. All men mean well.”

“When you find something funny search it for hidden truth.”

“Morality is not respectability.”

“Have you no morals, man?' 'Can't afford them,Governor.”

“Capitalism drives the employers to do their worst to the employed, and the employed to do the least for them. And it boasts all the time of the incentive it provides to both to do their best! . . . The reason the Capitalist system has worked so far without jamming for more than a few months at a time, and then only in places, is that it has not yet succeeded in making a conquest of human nature so complete that everybody acts on strictly business principles.”

“The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.”

“The vilest abortionist is he who attempts to mould a child's character.”

“What man really wishes to do he will find a means of doing.”

“There are no perfectly honorable men; but every true man has one main point of honor and a few minor ones.”

“Don't ask me for promises until I know what I am promising.”

“Brigham Young lived to become immortal in history as an American Moses by leading his people through the wilderness into an unpromised land.”

“The practical question, then, is what to do with the children. Tolerate them at home we will not. Let them run loose in the streets we dare not until our streets become safe places for children, which, to our utter shame, they are not at present, though they can hardly be worse than some homes and some schools.”

“He said that private practice in medicine ought to be put down by law. When I asked him why, he said that private doctors were ignorant licensed murders.”

“Let not the right side of your brain know what the left side doeth.”

“The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her.”

“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.”

“Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read.”

“It is a woman's business to get married as soon as possible, and a man's to keep unmarried as long as he can.”

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

“Liberty is the breath of life to nations.”

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

“We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence... on pain of liquidation.”

“When your eyes are fixed in the stare of unconsciousness, and your throat coughs the last gasping breath - as one dragged in the dark to a great precipice - what assistance are a wife and child?”

“As an old soldier, I admit the cowardice: it's as universal as seasickness, and matters just as little.”