George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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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.
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Worst of all, there is no sign of any relaxation of antisemitism. Logically it has nothing to do with Fascism. But the human raceis imitative rather than logical; and as Fascism spreads antisemitism spreads.
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Marx's Kapital is not a treatise on socialism; it is a gerrymand against the bourgeoisie. It was supposed to be written for the working class, but the working man respects the bourgeoisie and wants to be a bourgeoisie. Marx never got a hold of him for a moment. It was the revolting sons of the bourgeoisie itself, like myself, that painted the flag red. The middle and upper classes are the revolutionary element in society. The proletariat is the conservative element.
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Money enables us to get what we want instead of what other people think we want.
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Optimistic lies have such immense therapeutic value that a doctor who cannot tell them convincingly has mistaken his profession.
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During the last considerable epidemic at the turn of the century, I was a member of the Health Committee of London Borough Council, and I learned how the credit of vaccination is kept up statistically by diagnosing all the revaccinated cases (of smallpox) as pustular eczema, varioloid or what not---except smallpox.
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There is no accomplishment so easy to acquire as politeness and none more profitable.
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Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
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At present there is not a single credible established religion in the world.
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The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.
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It is nearly 50 years since I was assured by a conclave of doctors that if I did not eat meat I should die of starvation.
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I am a Christian. That obliges me to be a Communist.
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Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.
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When the world goes mad, one must accept madness as sanity; since sanity is, in the last analysis, nothing but the madness on which the whole world happens to agree.
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I 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.
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The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.
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Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.
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My own education has been entirely controversial: that is why I know what I am writing about; and appear eccentric to dogmatically educated Old School Ties whose heads are stuffed with obsolete shibboleths.
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The reformer for whom the world is not good enough finds himself shoulder to shoulder with him that is not good enough for the world.
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I must ... warn my readers that my attacks are directed against themselves, not against my stage figures.
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Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.
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We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners.
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The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.
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My schooling did me a great deal of harm and no good whatever; it was simply dragging a child's soul through the dirt.