George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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If more than ten percent of the public likes a painting, it should be burned.
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Socialists must be in favor of an aristocratic form of government. We must have the best men for the job . . . In the dictator you must have a man who has not only the power to govern but the force of character to impose himself as dictator whether you like him or not.
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The frontier between hell and heaven is only the difference between two ways of looking at things.
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Faith in reason as a prime motor is no longer the criterion of the sound mind, any more than faith in the Bible is the criterion of righteous intention.
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I can think of no other edifice constructed by man as altruistic as a lighthouse. They were built only to serve.
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It was from Handel that I learned that style consists in force of assertion.
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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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He who has never hoped can never despair...
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Well, upon my soul! You are not ashamed to stand there and confess yourself a disgusting drunkard.
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We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
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Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?
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You have set up in New York Harbor a monstrous idol which you call Liberty. The only thing that remains to complete that monument is to put on its pedestal the inscription written by Dante on the gate of hell: All hope abandon ye who enter here.
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You're not a man, you're a machine.
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We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.
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The test of good education is seeing how it behaves in a fight.
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A love affair should always be a honeymoon. And the only way to make sure of that is to keep changing the man; for the same man can never keep it up.
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A happy family is but an earlier heaven.
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God is on the side of the big battalions.
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It is not pleasure that makes life worth living. It is life that makes pleasure worth having.
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It is said that every people has the Government it deserves. It is more to the point that every Government has the electorate it deserves; for the orator of the front bench can edify or debauch an ignorant electorate at will.
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Let a short Act of Parliament be passed, placing all street musicians outside the protection of the law, so that any citizen may assail them with stones, sticks, knives, pistols or bombs without incurring any penalties.
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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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All Artists are Anarchists.
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I talk democracy to these men and women. I tell them that they have the vote, and that theirs is the kingdom and the power and the glory. I say to them You are supreme: exercise your power. They say, That's right: tell us what to do; and I tell them. I say Exercise our vote intelligently by voting for me. And they do. That's democracy; and a splendid thing it is too for putting the right men in the right place.