We know there is intention and purpose in the universe, because there is intention and purpose in us.
George Bernard ShawInstead of Otello being an Italian opera written in the style of Shakespeare, Othello is a play written by Shakespeare in the style of Italian opera.
George Bernard ShawLove is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.
George Bernard ShawFreedom, my good girl, means being able to count on how other people will behave.
George Bernard ShawThat is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms.
George Bernard ShawI occasionally swank a little because people like it; a modest man is such a nuisance.
George Bernard ShawWhen you prevent me from doing anything I want to do, that is persecution; when I prevent you from doing anything you want to do, that is law, order, and morals.
George Bernard ShawEvery child has a right to its own bent. . . . It has a right to find its own way and go its own way, whether that way seems wise or foolish to others, exactly as an adult has. It has a right to privacy as to its own doings and its own affairs as much as if it were its own father.
George Bernard ShawAmericans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.
George Bernard ShawEvery doctor will allow a colleague to decimate a whole countryside sooner than violate the bond of professional etiquette by giving him away.
George Bernard ShawIf in the library of your house you do not have the works of the ancient Greek writers, then you live in a house with no light.
George Bernard ShawIf a woman rebels against high-heeled shoes, she should take care to do it in a very smart hat
George Bernard ShawWhen a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.
George Bernard ShawThe only person who acts sensibly is my tailor. He takes my measure anew every time he sees me. Everyone else goes by their old measurements.
George Bernard ShawA socialist is somebody who doesn't have anything, and is ready to divide it up equally among everybody.
George Bernard ShawMoney is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis.
George Bernard ShawThe art of manipulating public opinion, which is a necessary art for the democratic politician, and, like other arts, is sometimespractised with greater virtuosity by knaves than by honest men (who are apt to disdain it), has a different technique in different countries. For instance, in England we excel in whitewashing: in America they excel in tarring and feathering. We strain our nerves and stretch our consciences to avoid a scandal: Americans do the same to make one.
George Bernard ShawThe fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
George Bernard ShawPut an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him.
George Bernard ShawDo you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are more true: they are the only things that are true.
George Bernard ShawA man without an address is a vagabond; a man with two addresses is a libertine.
George Bernard ShawIt is monstrous that custom should force us to display our faces ostentatiously, however worn and wrinkled and mean they may be, whilst carefully concealing all our other parts, however shapely and well preserved.
George Bernard ShawPatriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.
George Bernard ShawMy opportunities were still there, nay, they multiplied tenfold; but the strength and youth to cope with them began to fail, and to need eking out with the shifty cunning of experience.
George Bernard ShawA pornographic novelist is one who exploits the sexual instinct as a prostitute does. A legitimate sex novel elucidates it or brings out its poetry, tragedy, or comedy.
George Bernard ShawI choose not to make a graveyard of my body for the rotting corpses of dead animals.
George Bernard ShawScience is always simple and always profound. It is only the half-truths that are dangerous.
George Bernard ShawWhen an apparent miracle happened.it proved divine mission to the credulous, and proved a contract with the devil to the skeptical.
George Bernard ShawEmotional excitement reaches men through tea, tobacco, opium, whisky, and religion.
George Bernard Shaw