George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.
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If I were a woman, I'd simply refuse to speak to any man or do anything for men until I'd got the vote.
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A dinner! How horrible! I am to be made the pretext for killing all those wretched animals and birds, and fish! Thank you for nothing. Now if it were to be a fast instead of a feast; say a solemn three days' abstention from corpses in my honour, I could at least pretend to believe that it was disinterested. Blood sacrifices are not in my line...
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Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty; what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.
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It is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to think otherwise than in the fashion of their own period.
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In a stupid nation the man of genius becomes a god: everybody worships him and nobody does his will.
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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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The longer I live, the more convinced am I that this planet is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum.
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Some people look at the world and say 'why?' Some people look at the world and say 'why not?'
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Popular Christianity has for its emblem a gibbet, for its chief sensation a sanginary execution after torture, for its central mystery is an insane vengeance bought off by a trumpery expiation. But there is a nobler and profounder Christianity which affirms the sacred mystery of equality and forbids the glaring futility and folly of vengeance.
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In the arts of peace Man is a bungler.
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What use are cartridges in battle? I always carry chocolate instead.
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It is very doubtful whether man is enough of a political animal to produce a good, sensible, serious and efficient constitution. All the evidence is against it.
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All industries are brought under the control of such people [film producers] by Capitalism. If the capitalists let themselves be seduced from their pursuit of profits to the enchantments of art, they would be bankrupt before they knew where they were. You cannot combine the pursuit of money with the pursuit of art.
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Give me the artist who breathes it like a native, and goes about his work in it as quietly as a common man goes about his ordinary business. Mozart did so; and that is why I like him. Even if I did not, I should pretend to; for a taste in his music is a mark of caste among musicians, and should be worn, like a tall hat, by the amateur who wishes to pass for a true Brahmin.
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Englishmen never will be slaves; they are free to do whatever the government and public opinion allow them.
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I never accepted a knighthood because to me, is honour enough?
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Women are not angels. They are as foolish as men in many ways; but they have had to devote themselves to life whilst men have had to devote themselves to death; and that makes a vital difference in male and female religion. Women have been forced to fear whilst men have been forced to dare: the heroism of a woman is to nurse and protect life, and of a man to destroy it and court death.
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Where equality is undisputed, so also is subordination.
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No use slaving for me and then saying you want to be cared for: who cares for a slave? If you come back, come back for the sake of good fellowship; for you’ll get nothing else.
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There is the eternal war between those who are in the world for what they can get out of it and those who are in the world to make it a better place for everybody to live in.
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When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
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The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.
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Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?