George Bernard Shaw Quotes

If you do things merely because you think some other fool expects you to do them, and he expects you to do them because he thinks you expect him to expect you to do them, it will end in everybody doing what nobody wants to do, which is in my opinion a silly state of things.

Time enough to think of the future when you haven't any future to think of.

The Indian way of life provides the vision of the natural, real way of life. We veil ourselves with unnatural masks. On the face of India are the tender expressions which carry the mark of the Creators hand.

Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character.

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.

He never does a proper thing without giving an improper reason for it.

Gardening is the only unquestionably useful job.

Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.

Nothing makes a man so selfish as work.

It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn't really hurt.

We call the one side [of humanity] religion, and we call the other science. Religion is always right. ... Science is always wrong; it is the very artifice of men. Science can never solve one problem without raising ten more problems.

Poverty doesn't bring unhappiness; it brings degradation.

I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today. ... I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much-needed peace and happiness.

All great art and literature is propaganda.

Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.

It is feeling that sets a man thinking, and not thought that sets him feeling.

Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one's heart; but death is a splendid thing -a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.

It's a pity youth is wasted on the young.

The heretic is always better dead. And mortal eyes cannot distinguish the saint from the heretic.

I prefer the man who calls his nonsense a mystery to him who who pretends it is a weighed, measured, analyzed fact.

General consultant to mankind.

Seemingly unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. Much progress, therefore, depends on such people.

My mother married a very good man ... and she is not at all keen on my doing the same.

I never accepted a knighthood because to me, is honour enough?

Everything I eat has been proved by some doctor or other to be a deadly poison, and everything I don't eat has been proved to be indispensable for life. But I go marching on.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read.

Our first duty, to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor.

Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.

People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

We throw the whole drudgery of creation on one sex, and then imply that no female of any delicacy would initiate any effort in that direction.

Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion. When they refuse to be governed by law or persuasion, they have to be governed by force or fraud, or both.

The person who is ignorant enough to believe that his nourishment depends on meat is in a horrible dilemma.

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

I am a Christian. That obliges me to be a Communist.

I 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. No, give me a ruined complexion and a lost figure and sixteen chins on a farmyard of Crow's feet and an obvious wig. Then you shall see me coming out strong.

That is what all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud; and the world overhears them. But it's horribly lonely not to hear someone else talk sometimes.

Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?

You cannot be a hero without being a coward.

Money enables us to get what we want instead of what other people think we want.

Happiness and beauty are by-products. Folly is the direct pursuit of happiness and beauty.

The most sublime courage I have ever witnessed has been among that class too poor to know they possessed it, and too humble for the world to discover it.

Most people do not pray; they only beg.

You have a choice of trusting the natural stability of gold, or the honesty and intelligence of members of government.

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

When you want to put something into your part that is not in the play, you must ask the author-or some other author-to lead up to the interpolation for you. Never forget that the effect of a line may depend not on its delivery, but on something said earlier in the play, either by somebody else or by yourself, and that if you change it, it may be necessary to change the whole first act as well.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.