George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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It is always necessary to overstate a cast startlingly to make people sit up and listen to it, and to frighten them into acting on it.
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I'm an atheist and I thank God for it.
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Most of my recent plays were written in the railway train between Hatfield and Kings Cross. I write anywhere, on the top of omnibuses or wherever I may be; it is all the same to me.
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Nationalism must now be added to the refuse pile of superstitions. We are now citizens of the world, and the man who divides the race into elect Irishmen and reprobate foreign devils (especially Englishmen) had better live on the Blaskets where he can admire himself without disturbance.
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The utmost I can bear for myself in my best days is that I was one of the hundred best playwrights in the world, which is hardly a supreme distinction.
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From Mozart I learnt to say important things in a conversational way.
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Hypocrisy ... is only bad when it is improperly used.
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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.
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People have pointed out evidences of personal feeling in my notices as if they were accusing me of a misdemeanor, not knowing that criticism written without personal feeling is not worth reading. It is the capacity for making good or bad art a personal matter that makes a man a critic.
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Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open.
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It's just as unpleasant to get more than you bargain for as to get less.
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Effectiveness of assertion is the alpha and omega of style.
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The surest way to ruin a man who doesn't know how to handle money is to give him some.
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I would exchange every painting of Christ for one snapshot.
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Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
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Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
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General consultant to mankind.
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All government is cruel; for nothing is so cruel as impunity.
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Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.
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While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal living conditions on this earth?
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In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.
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An author who gives a manager or publisher any rights in his work except those immediately and specifically required for its publication or performance is for business purposes an imbecile.
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Ireland, sir, for good or evil, is like no other place under heaven, and no man can touch its sod or breathe its air without becoming better or worse.
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What is the matter with universities is that the students are school children, whereas it is of the very essence of university education that they should be adults.