George Bernard Shaw Quotes

670 Sourced Quotes

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
A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.

George Bernard Shaw
We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!

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

George Bernard Shaw