When a man teaches something he does not know to somebody else who has no aptitude for it, and gives him a certificate of proficiency, the latter has completed the education of a gentleman.
George Bernard ShawThe British churchgoer prefers a severe preacher because he thinks a few home truths will do his neighbors no harm.
George Bernard ShawI believe in Michelangelo, Velasquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by Beauty everlasting, and the message of Art that has made these hands blessed. Amen. Amen.
George Bernard ShawDuring the Suffragette revolt of 1913 I[urged] that what was needed was not the vote, but a constitutional amendment enactingthat all representative bodies shall consist of women and men in equal numbers, whether elected or nominated or coopted or registered or picked up in the street like a coroner's jury. In the case of elected bodies the only way of effecting this is by the Coupled Vote. The representative unit must not be a man or a woman but a man and a woman.
George Bernard ShawThe fact that we can become accustomed to anything, however disgusting at first, makes it necessary to examine carefully everything we have become accustomed to.
George Bernard ShawNationalism must now be added to the refuse pile of superstitions. We are now citizens of the world, and the man who divides the race into elect Irishmen and reprobate foreign devils (especially Englishmen) had better live on the Blaskets where he can admire himself without disturbance.
George Bernard ShawGeniuses are horrid, intolerant, easily offended, sleeplessly self-conscious men, who expect their wives to be angels with no further business in life than to pet and worship their husbands. Even at the best they are not comfortable men to live with; and a perfect husband is one who is perfectly comfortable to live with.
George Bernard ShawTitles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced by the inferior.
George Bernard ShawThe pianoforte is the most important of all musical instruments; its invention was to music what the invention of printing was to poetry.
George Bernard ShawIf any religion had a chance of ruling over England, nay Europe within the next hundred years, it could be Islam.
George Bernard ShawThe wheels are turning, but the hamsters are all dead. Make it idiot-proof and someone will make a better idiot. I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig, you get dirty; and besides, the pig likes it.
George Bernard ShawI ... must continue to strive for more knowledge and more power, though the new knowledge always contradicts the old and the new power is the destruction of the fools who misuse it.
George Bernard ShawThe average age (longevity) of a meat eater is 63. I am on the verge of 85 and still work as hard as ever. I have lived quite long enough and am trying to die; but I simply cannot do it. A single beef-steak would finish me; but I cannot bring myself to swallow it. I am oppressed with a dread of living forever. That is the only disadvantage of vegetarianism.
George Bernard ShawIt exasperated her to think that the dungeon in which she had languished for so many unhappy years had been unlocked all the time, and that the impulses she had so carefully struggled with and stifled for the sake of keeping well with society, were precisely those by which alone she could have come into any sort of sincere human contact.
George Bernard ShawSuppose the world were only one of God's jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one?
George Bernard ShawWhen I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.
George Bernard ShawOld men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.
George Bernard ShawThe great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no thirdclass carriages, and one soul is as good as another.
George Bernard ShawAs long as you don't fly openly in the face of society, society doesn't ask any inconvenient questions; and it makes precious short work of the cads who do. There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.
George Bernard ShawFaith in reason as a prime motor is no longer the criterion of the sound mind, any more than faith in the Bible is the criterion of righteous intention.
George Bernard ShawPeople exaggerate the value of things they haven't got everybody worships truth and unselfishness because they have no experience with them
George Bernard ShawLiquor is the chloroform which enables the poor man to endure the painful operation of living.
George Bernard ShawWhenever I see the word Operation, especially Trifling Operation, I at once write off the patient as dead.
George Bernard ShawBourgeois morality is largely a system of making cheap virtues a cloak for expensive vices.
George Bernard ShawI never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.
George Bernard ShawTo a professional critic (I have been one myself) theatre-going is the curse of Adam. The play is the evil he is paid to endure in the sweat of his brow; and the sooner it is over, the better.
George Bernard ShawThere is, on the whole, nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school. To begin with, it is a prison. But in some respects more cruel than a prison. In a prison, for instance, you are not forced to read books written by the warders and the governor. . . .In the prison you are not forced to sit listening to turnkeys discoursing without charm or interest on subjects that they don't understand and don't care about, and therefore incapable of making you understand or care about. In a prison they may torture your body; but they do not torture your brains.
George Bernard ShawShe is immensely interested in him. She has even secret mischievous moments in which she wishes she could get him alone, on a desert island, away from all ties and with nobody else in the world to consider, and just drag him off his pedestal and see him making love like any common man.
George Bernard ShawThe goal of an artist is to create the definitive work that cannot be surpassed.
George Bernard ShawCapitalism justified itself and was adopted as an economic principle on the express ground that it provides selfish motives for doing good, and that human beings will do nothing except for selfish motives
George Bernard Shaw