George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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There is in man a specific lust for cruelty which infects even his passion of pity and makes it savage.
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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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Fine art is the only teacher except torture.
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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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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?
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Shall I turn up the light for you? No, give me deeper darkness. Money is not made in the light.
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Property, said Proudhon, is theft. This is the only perfect truism that has been uttered on the subject.
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The road to ignorance is paved with good editions. Only the illiterate can afford to buy good books now.
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If you say that God is good, great, blessed, wise or any such thing, the starting point is this : God is.
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Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
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Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.
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If you're not producing as much as you consume, or perhaps a little more, then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us, and it can't be of very much use to yourself.
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A serious illness or a death advertises the doctor exactly as a hanging advertises the barrister who defended the person hanged.
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I no longer desire happiness: life is nobler than that.
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I was a freethinker before I knew how to think.
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Man is unique in that he has plans, purpose and goals which require the need for criteria of choice. The need for ethical value is within man whose future may largely be determined by the choice he make...
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We call the one side [of humanity] religion, and we call the other science. Religion is always right. ... Science is always wrong; it is the very artifice of men. Science can never solve one problem without raising ten more problems.
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I like to quote myself frequently and often, it makes me sound much more intelligent than I actually am.
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Nobody can live in society without conventions. The reason why sensible people are as conventional as they can bear to be is that conventionality saves so much time and thought and trouble and social friction of one sort or another that it leaves them much more leisure time for freedom than unconventionality does.
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He who has never hoped can never despair...
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Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid...There is no harm in a well-fed lion. It has no ideals, no sect, no party.
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The notion that disarmament can put a stop to war is contradicted by the nearest dogfight.
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The great secret...is not having bad manners or good manners...but having the same manner for all human souls.
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It is not pleasure that makes life worth living. It is life that makes pleasure worth having.