George Bernard Shaw Quotes

670 Sourced Quotes

A love affair should always be a honeymoon. And the only way to make sure of that is to keep changing the man; for the same man can never keep it up.

George Bernard Shaw
The last word remains with Christ and Handel; and this must stand as the best defence of Tolerance until a better man than I makes a better job of it.
Put shortly and undramatically the case is that a civilization cannot progress without criticism, and must therefore, to save itself from stagnation and putrefaction, declare impunity for criticism. This means impunity not only for propositions which, however novel, seem interesting, statesmanlike, and respectable, but for propositions that shock the uncritical as obscene, seditious, blasphemous, heretical, and revolutionary.

George Bernard Shaw
There is only one belief that can rob death of its sting and the grave of its victory. For without that you cannot be born again.

George Bernard Shaw
But a lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.

George Bernard Shaw
I know Miss Warren is a great devotee of the Gospel of Getting On.

George Bernard Shaw
The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

George Bernard Shaw
My way of joking is to tell the truth. That's the funniest joke in the world.

George Bernard Shaw
It is greatly to Mrs Patrick Campbell's credit that, bad as the play was, her acting was worse.
Review of Sardou Fedora 1 June 1895

George Bernard Shaw
I have never admitted the right of an elderly author to alter the work of a young author, even when the young author happens to be his former self.

George Bernard Shaw
In truth, mankind cannot be saved from without, by schoolmasters or any other sort of masters: it can only be lamed and enslaved by them. It is said that if you wash a cat it will never again wash itself. This may or may not be true: what is certain is that if you teach a man anything he will never learn it; and if you cure him of a disease he will be unable to cure himself the next time it attacks him.

George Bernard Shaw
What the world calls originality is only an unaccustomed method of tickling it.

George Bernard Shaw
The road to ignorance is paved with good editions. Only the illiterate can afford to buy good books now.

George Bernard Shaw
You don't get tired of muffins, but you don't find inspiration in them.

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

George Bernard Shaw
The more reasonable a student was in mathematics, the more unreasonable she was in the affairs of real life, concerning which fewtrustworthy postulates have yet been ascertained.

George Bernard Shaw
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…

George Bernard Shaw
You cannot learn to skate without making yourself ridiculous - the ice of life is slippery.

George Bernard Shaw
Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

George Bernard Shaw
Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it…

George Bernard Shaw
The notion that the colonel need be a better man than the private is as confused as the notion that the keystone need be stronger than the coping stone.

George Bernard Shaw
I was convinced that Ceylon is the cradle of the human race because everyone there looks an original.

George Bernard Shaw
Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization.

George Bernard Shaw
You sometimes have to answer a woman according to her womanliness, just as you have to answer a fool according to his folly.

George Bernard Shaw
Do not try to live for ever. You will not succeed.

George Bernard Shaw
Blasphemy and sedition (meaning the truth about Church and State).

George Bernard Shaw