George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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It seems as though every time you learn something new you have to give up something.
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I make a fortune from criticizing the policy of the government, and then hand it over to the government in taxes to keep it going.
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All young women begin by believing they can change and reform the men they marry. They can't.
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People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.
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You sometimes have to answer a woman according to her womanliness, just as you have to answer a fool according to his folly.
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And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand.
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An English army led by an Irish general: that might be a match for a French army led by an Italian general.
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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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God has given us a world that nothing but our own folly keeps from being a paradise.
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It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
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I no longer desire happiness: life is nobler than that.
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All evolution in thought and conduct must at first appear as heresy and misconduct.
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When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.
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Give women the vote, and in five years there will be a crushing tax on bachelors.
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I ... must continue to strive for more knowledge and more power, though the new knowledge always contradicts the old and the new power is the destruction of the fools who misuse it.
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Fine art is the subtlest, the most seductive, the most effective instrument of moral propaganda in the world, excepting only the example of personal conduct; and I waive even this exception in favor of the art of the stage, because it works by exhibiting examples of personal conduct made intelligible and moving to crowds of unobservant unreflecting people to whom real life means nothing.
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What right has any human being to talk of bringing up a child? You do not bring up a tree or a plant. It brings itself up. You have to give it a fair chance by tilling the soil.
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Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannot endure it. Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life.
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A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.
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That proves it's not by Shaw, because all Shaw's characters are himself: mere puppets stuck up to spout Shaw.
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War can so easily be gilt with romance and heroism and solemn national duty and patriotism and the like by persons whose superficial literary and oratorical talent covers an abyss of Godforsaken folly.
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Such poverty as we have today in all our great cities degrades the poor, and infects with its degradation the whole neighborhood in which they live. And whatever can degrade a neighborhood can degrade a country and a continent and finally the whole civilized world, which is only a large neighborhood.
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There is only one person an English girl hates more than she hates her elder sister; and that is her mother.
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We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.