George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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What we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real.
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The person I miss most is the one I could have been.
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The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.
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Most people go to their grave with their music inside them.
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Eternal is the fact that the human creature born in Ireland and brought up in its air is Irish. I have lived for twenty years in Ireland and for seventy-two in England; but the twenty came first and in Britain I am still a foreigner and shall die one.
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I was always unlawful; I broke the law when I was born because my parents weren't married.
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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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That is what all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud; and the world overhears them. But it's horribly lonely not to hear someone else talk sometimes.
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Perhaps you know some well-off families who do not seem to suffer from their riches. They do not overeat themselves; they find occupations to keep themselves in health; they do not worry about their position; they put their money into safe investments and are content with a low rate of interest; and they bring up their children to live simply and do useful work. But this means that they do not live like rich people at all, and might therefore just as well have ordinary incomes.
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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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Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
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When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.
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Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.
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Never fret for an only son, the idea of failure will never occur to him.
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My way hither was the way of destiny; for I am he of whose genius you are the symbol: part brute, part woman, and part God - nothing of man in me at all. Have I read your riddle, Sphinx?
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It is not enough to know what is good: you must be able to do it.
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Fear is choosing the safe course...
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A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people's time to look after them.
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Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.
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When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.
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There is not one single established religion that an intelligent, educated man can believe.
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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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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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I'm one of the undeserving poor: that's what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he's up agen middle class morality all the time.... What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything.