George Bernard Shaw Quotes

670 Sourced Quotes

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 worst cliques are those which consist of one man.

George Bernard Shaw
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle for me. It is a sort of splendid torch, which I have got hold of for the moment; and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

George Bernard Shaw
It is more dangerous to be a great prophet or poet than to promote twenty companies for swindling simple folk out of their savings.

George Bernard Shaw
The notion that Nature does not proceed by jumps is only one of the budget of plausible lies that we call classical education. Nature always proceeds by jumps. She may spend twenty thousand years making up her mind to jump; but when she makes it up at last, the jump is big enough to take us into a new age.

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
There are no secrets except the secrets that keep themselves.

George Bernard Shaw
Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parent.

George Bernard Shaw
Every step of progress means a duty repudiated, and a scripture torn up.

George Bernard Shaw
The Nazi movement is in many respects one which has my warmest sympathy.

George Bernard Shaw
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of Hell.

George Bernard Shaw
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

George Bernard Shaw
Composers are not human; They can live on diminished sevenths, and be contented with a pianoforte for a wife, and a string quartet for a family.

George Bernard Shaw
The great dramatist has something better to do than to amuse either himself or his audience. He has to interpret life.

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

George Bernard Shaw
Swindon: What will history say?
Burgoyne: History, sir, will tell lies as usual.

George Bernard Shaw
No age or condition is without its heroes. The least incapable general in a nation is its Caesar, the least imbecile statesman its Solon, the least confused thinker its Socrates, the least commonplace poet its Shakespeare.

George Bernard Shaw
You have no right to say that I am not sincere. I have found a happiness in art that real life has never given me. I am intensely in earnest about art. There is is a magic and mystery in art that you know nothing of.

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

George Bernard Shaw
Well, sir, you never can tell. That's a principle in life with me, sir, if you'll excuse my having such a thing, sir.

George Bernard Shaw
The road to ignorance is paved with good editions. Only the illiterate can afford to buy good books now.

George Bernard Shaw
You sometimes have to answer a woman according to her womanliness, just as you have to answer a fool according to his folly.

George Bernard Shaw