George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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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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Martyrdom is the only path to immortality that requires no talent whatsoever.
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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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The art of manipulating public opinion, which is a necessary art for the democratic politician, and, like other arts, is sometimespractised with greater virtuosity by knaves than by honest men (who are apt to disdain it), has a different technique in different countries. For instance, in England we excel in whitewashing: in America they excel in tarring and feathering. We strain our nerves and stretch our consciences to avoid a scandal: Americans do the same to make one.
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Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.
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There are only two classes in good society in England: the equestrian classes and the neurotic classes.
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A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
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A man ought to be able to be fond of his wife without making a fool of himself about her.
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It seems as though every time you learn something new you have to give up something.
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Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.
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To withhold deserved praise lest it should make its object conceited is as dishonest as to withhold payment of a just debt lest your creditor should spend the money badly.
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There is at bottom only one genuinely scientific treatment for all diseases, and that is to stimulate the phagocytes.
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All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.
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Of all human struggles there is none so treacherous and remorseless as the struggle between the artist man and the mother woman.
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Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis.
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Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
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We are not taught to think decently on sex subjects, and consequently we have no language for them except indecent language.
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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 use of straining after an amiable view of things, when a cynical view is most likely to be the true one?
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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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What is really important in Man is the part of him that we do not understand. Of much of it we are not even conscious, just as we are not normally conscious of keeping up our circulation by our heart-pump, though if we neglect it we die.
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Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
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I would exchange every painting of Christ for one snapshot.
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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.