George Bernard Shaw Quotes

I appeal to the chemists to discover a humane gas that will kill instantly and painlessly. In short- a gentlemanly gas deadly by all means, but humane, not cruel.

The longer I live, the more convinced am I that this planet is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum.

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

Most people go to their grave with their music inside them.

Even under the most perfect Social Democracy we should, without Communism, still be living like hogs, except that each hog would get his fair share of grub.... Whilst we are hogs, let us at least be well-fed, healthy, reciprocally useful hogs, instead of--well, instead of the sort we are at present.

Experience fails to teach where there is no desire to learn.

You accepted Allah or you had your throat cut by someone who did accept him, and who went to Paradise for having sent you to Hell.

Without music we shall surely perish of drink, morphia, and all sorts of artificial exaggerations of the cruder delights of the senses.

Imprisonment, as it exists today, is a worse crime than any of those committed by its victims.

Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.

The price of ability does not depend on merit but on supply and demand.

No use slaving for me and then saying you want to be cared for: who cares for a slave? If you come back, come back for the sake of good fellowship; for you’ll get nothing else.

The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

All Artists are Anarchists.

Just as I cannot remember any time when I could not read and write, I cannot remember any time when I did not exercise my imagination in daydreams about women.

The man who has never made a mistake will never make anything else.

Life is too short for men to take it seriously.

O Lord! I don't know which is the worst of the country, the walking or the sitting at home with nothing to do.

Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.

There is only one belief that can rob death of its sting and the grave of its victory. For without that you cannot be born again.

Instruction in sex is as important as instruction in food; yet not only are our adolescents not taught the physiology of sex, but never warned that the strongest sexual attraction may exist between persons so incompatible in tastes and capacities that they could not endure living together for a week much less a lifetime.

Violence is the repartee of the illiterate.

I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.

It is clear that a novel cannot be too bad to be worth publishing. . . . It certainly is possible for a novel to be too good to be worth publishing.

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

The right to know is like the right to live. It is fundamental and unconditional in its assumption that knowledge, like life, is a desirable thing.

A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.

It is not enough to know what is good: you must be able to do it.

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

The law is equal before all of us; but we are not all equal before the law. Virtually there is one law for the rich and another for the poor, one law for the cunning and another for the simple, one law for the forceful and another for the feeble, one law for the ignorant and another for the learned, one law for the brave and another for the timid, and within family limits one law for the parent and no law at all for the child.

Consciousness of a fact is not knowing it: if it were, the fish would know more of the sea than the geographers and the naturalists.

If a man is indolent, let him be poor. If he is drunken, let him be poor.... Also--somewhat inconsistently--blessed are the poor!

The statesman cannot govern without stability of belief, true or false.

Education can and should do much influence social, moral and intellectual discovery by stimulating critical attitudes of thought in the young

I never expect a soldier to think.

Greatness is one of the sensations of littleness

A married man is a man with a past, while a bachelor is a man with a future.

You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.

The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.

Though justice be Thy plea, consider this: That in the course of justice none of us should see salvation. We do pray for mercy, And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy.

All problems are finally scientific problems.

Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.

If I refuse to allow my leg to be amputated, its mortification and my death may prove that I was wrong; but if I let the leg go, nobody can ever prove that it would not have mortified had I been obstinate. Operation is therefore the safe side for the surgeon as well as the lucrative side.

Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and calves and that men and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock.

Doing what needs to be done may not make you happy, but it will make you great.

The truth is the one thing that nobody will believe.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

Give women the vote, and in five years there will be a crushing tax on bachelors.