It is the highest creatures who take the longest to mature, and are the most helpless during their immaturity.
George Bernard ShawA man is like a phonograph with half-a-dozen records. You soon get tired of them all; and yet you have to sit at table whilst he reels them off to every new visitor.
George Bernard ShawWhen it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones.
George Bernard ShawGirls, like men, want to be petted, pitied, and made much of, when they are diffident, in low spirits, or in unrequited love. These are services which the weak cannot render to the strong and which the strong will not render to the weak, except when there is also a difference of sex.
George Bernard ShawA nap, my friend, is a brief period of sleep which overtakes superannuated persons when they endeavor to entertain unwelcome visitors or to listen to scientific lectures.
George Bernard ShawYou have nothing to do but mention the quantum theory, and people will take your voice for the voice of science, and belive anything.
George Bernard ShawCivilized society is one huge bourgeoisie: no nobleman dares now shock his greengrocer.
George Bernard ShawAll censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions.
George Bernard ShawUnless the people can choose their leaders and rulers, and can revoke their choice at intervals long enough to test their measuresby results, the government will be a tyranny exercised in the interests of whatever classes or castes or mobs or cliques have this choice.
George Bernard ShawI hope you have lost your good looks, for while they last any fool can adore you, and the adoration of fools is bad for the soul.
George Bernard ShawPerhaps you know some well-off families who do not seem to suffer from their riches. They do not overeat themselves; they find occupations to keep themselves in health; they do not worry about their position; they put their money into safe investments and are content with a low rate of interest; and they bring up their children to live simply and do useful work. But this means that they do not live like rich people at all, and might therefore just as well have ordinary incomes.
George Bernard ShawThe nation's morals are like its teeth: the more decayed they are the more it hurts to touch them.
George Bernard ShawLiterature is like any other trade; you will never sell anything unless you go to the right shop.
George Bernard ShawOptimistic lies have such immense therapeutic value that a doctor who cannot tell them convincingly has mistaken his profession.
George Bernard ShawThe confusing of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error.
George Bernard ShawOf all the anti-social vested interests the worst is the vested interest in ill-health.
George Bernard Shaw[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time.
George Bernard ShawThe only sensible person is my tailor. He measures me anew each time he sees me.
George Bernard ShawI like flowers, I also like children, but I do not chop their heads off and keep them in bowls of water around the house.
George Bernard ShawI don't know what to say about this book. The experience on which it is founded is so extraordinary, that an honest record of it should be preserved . . . But it would have driven me mad; and I am not sure that the author came out of it without a slight derangement.
George Bernard ShawHow can you dare teach a man to read until you've taught him everything else first?
George Bernard ShawIn your dread of dictators you established a state of society in which every ward boss is a dictator, every private employer a dictator, every financier a dictator, all with the livelihood of the workers at his mercy, and no public responsibility.
George Bernard ShawThere is nothing on earth more exquisite than a bonny book, with well-placed columns of rich black writing in beautiful borders, and illuminated pictures cunningly inset. But nowadays, instead of looking at books, people read them. A book might as well be one of those orders for bacon and bran.
George Bernard ShawSome persons, by hating vice too much, come to love men too little. Hatred is self-punishment. Hatred is the cowards revenge for being intimidated.
George Bernard ShawThe world was to Shakespeare a great stage of fools on which he was utterly bewildered. His pregnant observations of life are not coordinated into any philosophy.
George Bernard ShawBesides, do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we ever do it?
George Bernard ShawAssasination on the scaffold is the worst form of assasination, because there it is invested with the approval of society.
George Bernard ShawBut a mother is like a broomstick or like the sun in the heavens, it does not matter which as far as one's knowledge of her is concerned: the broomstick is there and the sun is there; and whether the child is beaten by it or warmed and enlightened by it, it accepts it as a fact in nature, and does not conceive it as having had youth, passions, and weaknesses, or as still growing, yearning, suffering, and learning.
George Bernard ShawA healthy nation is as unconscious of its nationality as a healthy man of his bones. But if you break a person's nationality it will think of nothing else but getting it set again.
George Bernard Shaw