George Bernard Shaw Quotes

670 Sourced Quotes

The greatest of our evils and the worst of our crimes is poverty.

George Bernard Shaw
All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

George Bernard Shaw
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

George Bernard Shaw
Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.

George Bernard Shaw
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.

George Bernard Shaw
Plato long ago pointed out the importance of being governed by men with sufficient sense of responsibility and comprehension of public duties to be very reluctant to undertake the work of governing.

George Bernard Shaw
Liza: My aunt died of influenza: so they said … But it's my belief (as how) they done the old woman in.

George Bernard Shaw
I exclude the hypothesis of complete originality on [Charles] Lever's part, because a man can no more be completely original in that sense than a tree can grow out of air.

George Bernard Shaw
Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.

George Bernard Shaw
A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.

George Bernard Shaw
THE HE-ANCIENT: When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth
STREPHON: Yes; and take all the fun out of it.

George Bernard Shaw
They have accepted the burden of eternal life. They have taken the agony from birth; and their life does not fail them even in the hour of their destruction.

George Bernard Shaw
Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

George Bernard Shaw
Vulgarity is a necessary part of a complete author's equipment; and the clown is sometimes the best part of the circus.

George Bernard Shaw
In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.

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

George Bernard Shaw
It is evident that if the incomes of the rich were taken from them and divided among the poor as we stand at present, the poor would be very little less poor; the supply of capital would cease because nobody could afford to save; the country houses would fall into ruins; and learning and science and art and literature and all the rest of what we call culture would perish.

George Bernard Shaw
Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion. When they refuse to be governed by law or persuasion, they have to be governed by force or fraud, or both.

George Bernard Shaw
Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.

George Bernard Shaw
The man who listens to Reason is lost: Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her.

George Bernard Shaw
What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.

George Bernard Shaw
There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.

George Bernard Shaw
The nauseous sham goodfellowship our democratic public men get up for shop use.

George Bernard Shaw
It is said that every people has the Government it deserves. It is more to the point that every Government has the electorate it deserves; for the orator of the front bench can edify or debauch an ignorant electorate at will.

George Bernard Shaw
The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

George Bernard Shaw
The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing.

George Bernard Shaw
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

George Bernard Shaw
A healthy nation is as unconscious of its nationality as a healthy man of his bones. But if you break a nation's nationality it will think of nothing else but getting it set again.

George Bernard Shaw
People will have their miracles, their stories, their heroes and heroines and saints and martyrs and divinities to exercise their gifts of affection, admiration, wonder, and worship, and their Judases and devils to enable them to be angry and yet feel that they do well to be angry. Every one of these legends is the common heritage of the human race; and there is only one inexorable condition attached to their healthy enjoyment, which is that no one shall believe them literally. The reading of stories and delighting in them made Don Quixote a gentleman: the believing them literally made him a madman who slew lambs instead of feeding them.

George Bernard Shaw
Chloroform has done a lot of mischief. It's enabled every fool to be a surgeon.

George Bernard Shaw