George Bernard Shaw Quotes

670 Sourced Quotes

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.

George Bernard Shaw
In gambling the many must lose in order that the few may win.

George Bernard Shaw
Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

George Bernard Shaw
To endure the pain of living, we all drug ourselves more or less with gin, with literature, with superstitions, with romance, with idealism, political, sentimental, and moral, with every possible preparation of that universal hashish: imagination.

George Bernard Shaw
I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.

George Bernard Shaw
The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plains.

George Bernard Shaw
The Jews generally give value. They make you pay; but they deliver the goods. In my experience the men who want something for nothing are invariably Christians.

George Bernard Shaw
The public want actresses, because they think all actresses bad. They don't want music or poetry because they know that both are good. So actors and actresses thrive and poets and composers starve.

George Bernard Shaw
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

George Bernard Shaw
Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

George Bernard Shaw
You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

George Bernard Shaw
I am very subtle; but Man is deeper in his thought than I am. The woman knows that there is no such thing as nothing: the man knows that there is no such day as tomorrow. I do well to worship them.

George Bernard Shaw
Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?

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

George Bernard Shaw
As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

George Bernard Shaw
We are members one of another; so that you cannot injure or help your neighbor without injuring or helping yourself.

George Bernard Shaw
In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.

George Bernard Shaw
Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are more true: they are the only things that are true.

George Bernard Shaw
Man can climb to the highest summits; but he cannot dwell there long.

George Bernard Shaw
All young women begin by believing they can change and reform the men they marry. They can't.

George Bernard Shaw
Marry Ann; and at the end of a week you'll find no more inspiration in her than in a plate of muffins.

George Bernard Shaw
What hope is there then of human improvement? According to the Neo-Darwinists, to the Mechanists, no hope whatever, because improvement can come only through some senseless accident which must, on the statistical average of accidents, be presently wiped out by some other equally senseless accident.

George Bernard Shaw
Worst of all, there is no sign of any relaxation of antisemitism. Logically it has nothing to do with Fascism. But the human raceis imitative rather than logical; and as Fascism spreads antisemitism spreads.

George Bernard Shaw
Religion is always right. Religion solves every problem and thereby abolishes problems from the Universe. Religion gives us certainty, stability, peace and the absolute. It protects us against progress which we all dread. Science is the very opposite. Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem without raising ten more problems.

George Bernard Shaw
A moderately honest man with a moderately faithful wife, moderate drinkers both, in a moderately healthy house: that is the true middle class unit.

George Bernard Shaw
What is any respectable girl brought up to do but to catch some rich man's fancy and get the benefit of his money by marrying him?--as if a marriage ceremony could make any difference in the right or wrong of the thing!

George Bernard Shaw
I must have certainty. Give it to me; or I will kill you when next I catch you asleep.

George Bernard Shaw
I am giving you examples of the fact that this creature man, who in his own selfish affairs is a coward to the backbone, will fight for an idea like a hero.... I tell you, gentlemen, if you can shew a man a piece of what he now calls God's work to do, and what he will later call by many new names, you can make him entirely reckless of the consequences to himself personally.

George Bernard Shaw
There is no harder scientific fact in the world than the fact that belief can be produced in practically unlimited quantity and intensity, without observation or reasoning, and even in defiance of both, by the simple desire to believe founded on a strong interest in believing.

George Bernard Shaw
All sorts of bodily diseases are produced by half-used minds.

George Bernard Shaw