George Bernard Shaw Quotes

670 Sourced Quotes

My friend, when a man has anything to tell in this world, the difficulty is not to make him tell it, but to prevent him from telling it too often.

George Bernard Shaw
[...] any fool can make a discovery. Every baby has to discover more in the first years of its life than Roger Bacon ever discovered in his laboratory.

George Bernard Shaw
Ireland, sir, for good or evil, is like no other place under heaven, and no man can touch its sod or breathe its air without becoming better or worse.

George Bernard Shaw
He never does a proper thing without giving an improper reason for it.

George Bernard Shaw
Howbeit, Paul succeeded in stealing the image of Christ crucified for the figure-head of his Salvationist vessel, with its Adam posing as the natural man, its doctrine of original sin, and its damnation avoidable only by faith in the sacrifice of the cross. In fact, no sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus.

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

George Bernard Shaw
I made my then famous declaration (among 100 people) 'I am a Socialist, an Atheist and a Vegetarian' (ergo, a true Shelleyan), whereupon two ladies who had been palpitating with enthusiasm for Shelley under the impression that he was a devout Anglican, resigned on the spot.

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
Audacious ribald: your laughter will finish in hideous boredom before morning.

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

George Bernard Shaw
Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.

George Bernard Shaw
Our natural dispositions may be good; but we have been badly brought up, and are full of anti-social personal ambitions and prejudices and snobberies. Had we not better teach our children to be better citizens than ourselves? We are not doing that at present. The Russians are. That is my last word. Think over it.

George Bernard Shaw
A day's work is a day's work, neither more nor less, and the man or woman who does it needs a day's sustenance, a night's repose and due leisure, whether they be painter or ploughman.

George Bernard Shaw
Even a vortex is a vortex in something. You can't have a whirlpool without water; and you can't have a vortex without gas, or molecules or atoms or ions or electrons or something, not nothing.

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
The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.

George Bernard Shaw
It is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to think otherwise than in the fashion of their own period.

George Bernard Shaw
The heretic is always better dead. And mortal eyes cannot distinguish the saint from the heretic.

George Bernard Shaw
If parents would only realize how they bore their children!

George Bernard Shaw
I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly tell our children that honesty is the best policy.

George Bernard Shaw
There are only two classes in good society in England: the equestrian classes and the neurotic classes.

George Bernard Shaw
I hate singers, a miserable crew who think that music exists only in their own throats.

George Bernard Shaw
Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.

George Bernard Shaw
Nothing can save us from a perpetual headlong fall into a bottomless abyss but a solid footing of dogma; and we no sooner agree to that than we find that the only trustworthy dogma is that there is no dogma.

George Bernard Shaw
Just as the historian can teach no real history until he has cured his readers of the romantic delusion that the greatness of a queen consists in her being a pretty woman and having her head cut off, so the playwright of the first order can do nothing with his audience until he has cured them of looking at the stage through the keyhole, and sniffing round the theatre as prurient people sniff round the divorce court.

George Bernard Shaw