George Bernard Shaw Quotes

Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown.

If you say that God is good, great, blessed, wise or any such thing, the starting point is this : God is.

Nothing is more dangerous than a poor doctor: not even a poor employer or a poor landlord.

Words are only postage stamps delivering the object for you to unwrap

Brigham Young lived to become immortal in history as an American Moses by leading his people through the wilderness into an unpromised land.

Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity, and beauty as conspicuously as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness, and ugliness.

An Englishman does everything on principle: he fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles.

Men are always thinking that they are going to do something grandly wicked to their enemies; but when it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones.

The function of the actor is to make the audience imagine for the moment that real things are happening to real people.

It is not true that men can be divided into absolutely honest persons and absolutely dishonest ones. Our honesty varies with the strain put on it.

What is any respectable girl brought up to do but to catch some rich man's fancy and get the benefit of his money by marrying him?--as if a marriage ceremony could make any difference in the right or wrong of the thing!

Never believe anything a writer tells you about himself. A man comes to believe in the end the lies he tells himself about himself.

Idiots are always in favour of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favour of equality.

The shot Irishmen will now take their places beside Emmet and the Manchester Martyrs in Ireland, and beside the heroes of Poland and Sérbia and Belgium in Europe; and nothing in heaven or earth can prevent it.

When a prisoner sees the door of his dungeon open, he dashes for it without stopping to think where he shall get his dinner outside.

My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.

An English army led by an Irish general: that might be a match for a French army led by an Italian general.

Some people look at the world and say 'why?' Some people look at the world and say 'why not?'

If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn't be anything for us to do.

The only time my education was interrupted was when I was in school.

There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle.

Religion is a great force - the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows don't understand is that you must get at a man through his own religion and not through yours.

Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!

The whole strength of England lies in the fact that the enormous majority of the English people are snobs.

A cigarette is a pinch of tobacco rolled in paper with fire at one end and a fool at the other.

It's a dangerous thing to be married right up to the hilt, like my daughter's husband. The man is at home all day, like a damned soul in hell.

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.

All classes in proportion to their lack of travel and familiarity with foreign literature are bellicose, prejudiced against foreigners, fond of fighting as a cruel sport - in short, dog-like in their notions of foreign policy.

I have very carefully studied Islam and the life of its Prophet (PBUH). I have done so both as a student of history and as a critic. And I have come to conclusion that Muhammad (PBUH) was indeed a great man and a deliverer and benefactor of mankind which was till then writhing under the most agonising Pain.

Nature holds no brief for the human experiment; it must stand or fall by its results.

If 'Pygmalion' is not good enough for your friends with its own verbal music, their talent must be altogether extraordinary.

I do not waste my time writing pot-boilers: the pot must be boiled, and even my pot au feu has some chunks of fresh meat in it. ...I have no time to boil myself down; and anyhow I could not do so and preserve all the necessary nutriment and the flavoring on which the digestibility depends.

The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

I become more convinced that beings from other planets are using the Earth as a lunatic asylum

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

My only policy is to profess evil and do good.

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

A revolutionist is one who desires to discard the existing social order and try another.

Democracy means the organization of society for the benefit and at the expense of everybody indiscriminately and not for the benefit of a privileged class.

He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

This is the true joy of life-the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown to the scrap-heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish clod of ailments and grievances.

If more than ten percent of the public likes a painting, it should be burned.

Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run.

Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.

The notion that inspiration is something that happened thousands of years ago, and was then finished and done with. . . the theory that God retired from business at that period and has not been heard from since, is as silly as it is blasphemous.

It was from Handel that I learned that style consists in force of assertion.