George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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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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You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well hammered yourself.
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The cinema is going to form the mind of England. The national conscience, the national ideals and tests of conduct, will be those of the film.
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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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Don't order any black things. Rejoice in his memory; and be radiant: leave grief to the children. Wear violet and purple. Be patient with the poor people who will snivel: they don't know; and they think they will live for ever, which makes death a division instead of a bond.
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The early Christian rules of life were not made to last, because the early Christians did not believe that the world itself was going to last.
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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 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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Those who won't hesitate to vivisect, won't hesitate to lie about it as well.
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Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.
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I find that socialism is often misunderstood by its least intelligent supporters and opponents to mean simply unrestrained indulgence of our natural propensity to heave bricks at respectable persons.
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In your Salvation shelter I saw poverty, misery, cold and hunger. You gave them bread and treacle and dreams of heaven. I give from thirty shillings a week to twelve thousand a year. They find their own dreams; but I look after the drainage.
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We must all share in the evils of the world or move to another planet.
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The ordinary man is an anarchist. He wants to do as he likes. He may want his neighbour to be governed, but he himself doesn't want to be governed. He is mortally afraid of government officials and policemen.
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The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.
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Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.
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All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of storytellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.
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I had patience with them for many ages: they tried me very sorely. They did terrible things: they embraced death, and said that eternal life was a fable. I stood amazed at the malice and destructiveness of the things I had made...
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Our first duty, to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor.
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Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.
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Always strive to find out what to do by thinking, without asking anybody. If you continually do this, you will soon act like a grown-up woman. For want of doing this, a very great number of grown-up people act like children.
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In gambling the many must lose in order that the few may win.
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The camera can represent flesh so superbly that, if I dared, I would never photograph a figure without asking that figure to take its clothes off.
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There is at bottom only one genuinely scientific treatment for all diseases, and that is to stimulate the phagocytes.