George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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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.
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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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The truth is the one thing that nobody will believe.
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England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
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Whenever I see the word Operation, especially Trifling Operation, I at once write off the patient as dead.
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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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An index is a great leveller.
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A modern gentleman is necessarily the enemy of his country. Even in war he does not fight to defend it, but to prevent his power of preying on it from passing to a foreigner.
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If you leave your art, the world will beat you back to it. The world has not an ambition worth sharing, or a prize worth handling.
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There is a terrible truthfulness about photography that sometimes makes a thing look ridiculous.
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I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance. I find that the moment I let myself make friends with a woman, I become selfish and tyrannical.
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Those who can’t change their minds can’t change anything.
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It's prudent to gain the whole world and lose your own soul. But don't forget that your soul sticks to you if you stick to it; but the world has a way of slipping through your fingers.
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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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In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.
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When you prevent me from doing anything I want to do, that is persecution; when I prevent you from doing anything you want to do, that is law, order, and morals.
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Is the devil to have all the passions as well as all the good tunes?
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When the master has come to do everything through the slave, the slave becomes his master, since he cannot live without him.
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People who are hard, grasping and always ready to take advantage of their neighbors become very rich.
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If Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters.
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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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Brains are not everything.
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Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible; and don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon.
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Where there is no knowledge ignorance calls itself science.