George Bernard Shaw Quotes

“I occasionally swank a little because people like it; a modest man is such a nuisance.”

“The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.”

“Englishmen never will be slaves; they are free to do whatever the government and public opinion allow them.”

“Fine art is the subtlest, the most seductive, the most effective instrument of moral propaganda in the world, excepting only the example of personal conduct; and I waive even this exception in favor of the art of the stage, because it works by exhibiting examples of personal conduct made intelligible and moving to crowds of unobservant unreflecting people to whom real life means nothing.”

“Telling the truth is the funniest joke in the world.”

“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.”

“The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no thirdclass carriages, and one soul is as good as another.”

“If you strike a child, take care that you strike it in anger, even at the risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neither can nor should be forgiven.”

“Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.”

“People expect too much of one year and too little of ten.”

“What the world calls originality is only an unaccustomed method of tickling it.”

“Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.”

“I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.”

“The educated man is a greater nuisance than the uneducated one.”

“The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.”

“The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.”

“Of all human struggles there is none so treacherous and remorseless as the struggle between the artist man and the mother woman.”

“Give women the vote, and in five years there will be a crushing tax on bachelors.”

“Remember always that the least plain sister is the family beauty.”

“Every doctor will allow a colleague to decimate a whole countryside sooner than violate the bond of professional etiquette by giving him away.”

“Who is this Baby Ruth? And what does she do?”

“Eternal is the fact that the human creature born in Ireland and brought up in its air is Irish. I have lived for twenty years in Ireland and for seventy-two in England; but the twenty came first and in Britain I am still a foreigner and shall die one.”

“It is doubtless wise, when a reform is introduced, to try to persuade the British public that it is not a reform at all; but appearances must be kept up to some extent at least.”

“You're only a beginner; and what you think is love, and interest, and all that, is not real love at all: three quarters of it is only unsatisfied curiosity.”

“The play was a great success, but audience was a dismal failure.”