George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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A child hasn't a grown-up person's appetite for affection. A little of it goes a long way with them; and they like a good imitation of it better than the real thing, as every nurse knows.
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What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?
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A drama critic is a man who leaves no turn unstoned.
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I hate performers who debase great works of art; I long for their annihilation.
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Remember always that the least plain sister is the family beauty.
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Thus, I blush to add, you can not be a philosopher and a good man, though you may be a philosopher and a great one.
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It is the first duty of every man not to be poor.
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Most of the money given by rich people in "charity" is made up of conscience money, "ransom," political bribery, and bids for titles.... One buys moral credit by signing a cheque, which is easier than turning a prayer wheel.
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We are the living graves of murdered beasts, slaughtered to satisfy our appetites. How can we hope in this world to attain the peace we say we are so anxious for?
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You may well ask me why...I took the time to write [books]. I can only reply that I do not know. There was no why about it. I had to: that was all.
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An index is a great leveller.
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The practical question, then, is what to do with the children. Tolerate them at home we will not. Let them run loose in the streets we dare not until our streets become safe places for children, which, to our utter shame, they are not at present, though they can hardly be worse than some homes and some schools.
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What is self-control? It is nothing but a highly developed vital sense, dominating and regulating the mere appetites. To overlook the very existence of this supreme sense; to miss the obvious inference that it is the quality that distinguishes the fittest to survive.
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The philosopher is Nature's pilot.
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We are compelled by the theory of God's already achieved perfection to make Him a devil as well as a god, because of the existenceof evil. The god of love, if omnipotent and omniscient, must be the god of cancer and epilepsy as well.... Whoever admits that anything living is evil must either believe that God is malignantly capable of creating evil, or else believe that God has made many mistakes in His attempts to make a perfect being.
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There are two things necessary to Salvation.... Money and gunpowder.
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Two people getting together to write a book is like three people getting together to have a baby. One of them is superfluous.
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Only in books has mankind known perfect truth, love and beauty.
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The popular definition of tragedy is heavy drama in which everyone is killed in the last act, comedy being light drama in which everyone is married in the last act.
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Unless the people can choose their leaders and rulers, and can revoke their choice at intervals long enough to test their measuresby results, the government will be a tyranny exercised in the interests of whatever classes or castes or mobs or cliques have this choice.
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If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
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Our lives are shaped not as much by our experiences as by our expectations.
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It is assumed that the woman must wait, motionless, until she is wooed. That is how the spider waits for the fly.
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To a professional critic theatre-going is the curse of Adam. The play is the evil he is paid to endure in the sweat of his brow; and the sooner it is over, the better.