George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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There are two things necessary to Salvation.... Money and gunpowder.
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In my dreams is a country where the State is the Church and the Church the people: three in one and one in three. It is a commonwealth in which work is play and play is life: three in one and one in three. It is a temple in which the priest is the worshiper and the worshiper the worshipped: three in one and one in three. It is a godhead in which all life is human and all humanity divine: three in one and one in three.
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Rich men without convictions are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity.
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Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the difference between one young woman and another.
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Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parent.
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As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
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I claim to be a conscientiously immoral writer.
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If you lived in London, where the whole system is one of false good-fellowship, and you may know a man for twenty years without finding out that he hates you like poison, you would soon have your eyes opened. There we do unkind things in a kind way: we say bitter things in a sweet voice: we always give our friends chloroform when we tear them to pieces.
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If a woman can, by careful selection of a father and nourishment of herself, produce a citizen with efficient senses, sound organs and a good digestion, she should clearly be secured a sufficient reward for that natural service to make her willing to undertake and repeat it.
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An interesting play cannot in the nature of things mean anything but a play in which problems of conduct and character of personalimportance to the audience are raised and suggestively discussed.
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If the governments devalue the currency in order to betray all creditors, you politely call this procedure 'inflation'.
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Some men are born kings; and some are born statesmen. The two are seldom the same.
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Freedom, my good girl, means being able to count on how other people will behave.
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Where there is no religion, hypocrisy becomes good taste.
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Assasination on the scaffold is the worst form of assasination, because there it is invested with the approval of society.
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My situation is a solemn one: life is offered to me on the condition of eating beefsteaks. But death is better than cannibalism. My will contains directions for my funeral, which will be followed, not by mourning coaches, but by oxen, sheep, flocks of poultry, and a small traveling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarves in honor of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow creatures. It will be, without the exception of Noah's Ark, the most remarkable thing of its kind ever seen.
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The notion that disarmament can put a stop to war is contradicted by the nearest dogfight.
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When an apparent miracle happened.it proved divine mission to the credulous, and proved a contract with the devil to the skeptical.
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You are all alike, you respectable people. You can't tell me the bursting strain of a ten-inch gun, which is a very simple matter;but you all think you can tell me the bursting strain of a man under temptation. You daren't handle high explosives; but you're all ready to handle honesty and truth and justice and the whole duty of man, and kill one another at that game. What a country! What a world!
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This is the true joy in life: Being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
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Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.
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Life on board a pleasure steamer violates every moral and physical condition of healthy life except fresh air. . . . It is a guzzling, lounging, gambling, dog's life. The only alternative to excitement is irritability.
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The test of good education is seeing how it behaves in a fight.
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Don't wait for the right opportunity: create it.