George Bernard Shaw Quotes

670 Sourced Quotes

I make no vows. I take my chance. … It means that I fear certainty as you fear uncertainty. It means that nothing is certain but uncertainty. If I bind the future I bind my will. If I bind my will I strangle creation.

George Bernard Shaw

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

George Bernard Shaw

The open mind never acts: when we have done our utmost to arrive at a reasonable conclusion, we still must close our minds for the moment with a snap, and act dogmatically on our conclusions.

George Bernard Shaw

Besides, do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we ever do it?

George Bernard Shaw

The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it.

George Bernard Shaw

I did not throw myself into the struggle for life: I threw my mother into it.

George Bernard Shaw

Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind. It is the deed that teaches not the name we give it.

George Bernard Shaw

Civilization is a disease produced by the practice of building societies with rotten material.

George Bernard Shaw

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

George Bernard Shaw

I ain't such a mug as to put up my children to all I know myself.

George Bernard Shaw

The sex relation is not a personal relation. It can be irresistibly desired and rapturously consummated between persons who could not endure one another for a day in any other relation.

George Bernard Shaw

I had not achieved a success; but I provoked an uproar; and the sensation was so agreeable that I resolved to try again.

George Bernard Shaw

When the master has come to do everything through the slave, the slave becomes his master, since he cannot live without him.

George Bernard Shaw

Oh, you are a very poor soldier—a chocolate cream soldier!

George Bernard Shaw

I ask you, what am I? I'm one of the undeserving poor: thats what I am. Think of what that means to a man.

George Bernard Shaw

In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it's more dangerous to lose than to win.

George Bernard Shaw

I know I began as a passion and have ended as a habit, like all husbands.

George Bernard Shaw

Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in short, is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.

George Bernard Shaw

I am a woman of the world, Hector; and I can assure you that if you will only take the trouble always to do the perfectly correct thing, and to say the perfectly correct thing, you can do just what you like.

George Bernard Shaw

Has fear ever held a man back from anything he really wanted?

George Bernard Shaw

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

George Bernard Shaw

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship; and it seems hard to justify an incitement to it on anti-censorial principles.

George Bernard Shaw

If one will only take the precaution to go in long enough after it commences and to come out long before it is over you will not find it wearisome.

Of Gounod's La Rédemption

George Bernard Shaw

The question of who are the best people to take charge of children is a very difficult one; but it is quite certain that the parents are the very worst.

George Bernard Shaw

What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn't come every day.

George Bernard Shaw

All government is cruel; for nothing is so cruel as impunity.

George Bernard Shaw

Political necessities sometimes turn out to be political mistakes.

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

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