George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.
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The chief objection to playing wind instruments is that it prolongs the life of the player.
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You can rave about Stravinsky without the slightest risk of being classified as a lunatic by the next generation .
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When the horrors of anarchy force us to set up laws that forbid us to fight and torture one another for sport, we still snatch at every excuse for declaring individuals outside the protection of law and torturing them to our hearts content.
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It is not true that men can be divided into absolutely honest persons and absolutely dishonest ones. Our honesty varies with the strain put on it.
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The writer who aims at producing the platitudes which are "not for an age, but for all time" has his reward in being unreadable inall ages....
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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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Nothing can save us from a perpetual headlong fall into a bottomless abyss but a solid footing of dogma; and we no sooner agree to that than we find that the only trustworthy dogma is that there is no dogma.
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My rank is the highest known in Switzerland: I'm a free citizen.
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You are all fundamentalists with a top dressing of science. That is why you are the stupidest of conservatives and reactionists in politics and the most bigoted of obstructionists in science itself. When it comes to getting a move on you are all of the same opinion: stop it, flog it, hang it, dynamite it, stamp it out.
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I had not achieved a success; but I provoked an uproar; and the sensation was so agreeable that I resolved to try again.
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Life must not cease. That comes before everything. It is silly to say you do not care. You do care. It is that care that will prompt your imagination; inflame your desires; make your will irresistible; and create out of nothing.
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To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching.
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The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.
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As 99 per cent of English authors and 100 per cent of American ones authors are just such imbeciles, managers and publishers make a practice of asking for every right the author possesses.
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A man learns to skate by staggering about and making a fool of himself. Indeed he progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself.
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Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.
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I do not, like the Fundamentalists, believe that creation stopped six thousand years ago after a week of hard work. Creation is going on all the time.
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I knew if I waited around long enough something like this would happen.
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A mind of the caliber of mine cannot derive its nutrient from cows.
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The fact is that the intrinsic worth of the book, play or whatever the author is trying to sell is the least, last factor in the the whole transaction.
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The great dramatist has something better to do than to amuse either himself or his audience. He has to interpret life.
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All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.
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The Anti-Vivisector does not deny that physiologists must make experiments and even take chances with new methods. He says that they must not seek knowledge by criminal methods, just as they must not make money by criminal methods. He does not object to Galileo dropping cannon balls from the top of the leaning tower of Pisa; but he would object to shoving off two dogs or American tourists.