George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay.
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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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Instruction in sex is as important as instruction in food; yet not only are our adolescents not taught the physiology of sex, but never warned that the strongest sexual attraction may exist between persons so incompatible in tastes and capacities that they could not endure living together for a week much less a lifetime.
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The 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.
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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 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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Social progress takes effect through the replacement of all institutions by new ones; and since every institution involves the recognition of the duty of conforming to it, progress must involve the repudiation of an established duty at every step.
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We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.
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The novelties of one generation are only the resuscitated fashions of the generation before last.
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Civilized society is one huge bourgeoisie: no nobleman dares now shock his greengrocer.
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Women are called womanly only when they regard themselves as existing solely for the use of men.
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Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.
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The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
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Music is the brandy of the damned.
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The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization. Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty . . . . Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys basic people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people.
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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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I'm not a teacher: only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead - ahead of myself as well as you.
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Money enables us to get what we want instead of what other people think we want.
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When will we realize that the fact that we can become accustomed to anything, however disgusting at first, makes it necessary to examine carefully everything we have become accustomed to.
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Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.
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An Irishman's imagination never lets him alone, never convinces him, never satisfies him; but it makes him that he can't face reality nor deal with it nor handle it nor conquer it: he can only sneer at them that do, and be 'agreeable to strangers', like a good-for-nothing woman on the streets.
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The British are apt to make merits of their stupidities, and to represent their various incapacities as points of good breeding.
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There is no accomplishment so easy to acquire as politeness and none more profitable.
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Oh, come! That boot is on the other leg. Why should you call me to account for eating decently? If I battened on the scorched corpses of animals, you might well ask me why I did that...