George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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The English are not a very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity.
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Let wife and child perish, and lay bricks for your last crust, rather than part with an iota of your copyrights.
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In the right key one can say anything. In the wrong key, nothing: the only delicate part is the establishment of the key.
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No Englishman is ever fairly beaten...
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All religions begin with a revolt against morality, and perish when morality conquers them.
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Has fear ever held a man back from anything he really wanted?
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Every child has a right to its own bent. . . . It has a right to find its own way and go its own way, whether that way seems wise or foolish to others, exactly as an adult has. It has a right to privacy as to its own doings and its own affairs as much as if it were its own father.
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People exaggerate the value of things they haven't got everybody worships truth and unselfishness because they have no experience with them.
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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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Go on writing plays, my boy, One of these days one of these London producers will go into his office and say to his secretary, "Is there a play from Shaw this morning?" and when she says, "No," he will say, "Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish." And that's your chance, my boy.
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Any belief worth having must survive doubt...
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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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How can you dare teach a man to read until you've taught him everything else first?
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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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My reputation grows with every failure.
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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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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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To endure the pain of living, we all drug ourselves more or less with gin, with literature, with superstitions, with romance, with idealism, political, sentimental, and moral, with every possible preparation of that universal hashish: imagination.
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Who is this Baby Ruth? And what does she do?
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There is a terrible truthfulness about photography that sometimes makes a thing look ridiculous.
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There is only one universal passion fear.
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Is the devil to have all the passions as well as all the good tunes?
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The medieval doctors of divinity who did not pretend to settle how many angels could dance on the point of a needle cut a very poor figure as far as romantic credulity is concerned beside the modern physicists who have settled to the billionth of a millimetre every movement and position in the dance of the electrons. Not for worlds would I question the precise accuracy of these calculations or the existence of electrons (whatever they may be). The fate of Joan is a warning to me against such heresy.
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The policy of letting things alone, in the practical sense that the Government should never interfere with business or go into business itself, is called Laisser-faire by economists and politicians. It has broken down so completely in practice that it is now discredited; but it was all the fashion in politics a hundred years ago, and is still influentially advocated by men of business and their backers who naturally would like to be allowed to make money as they please without regard to the interest of the public.