George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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Life is too short for men to take it seriously.
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No sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus.
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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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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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She is immensely interested in him. She has even secret mischievous moments in which she wishes she could get him alone, on a desert island, away from all ties and with nobody else in the world to consider, and just drag him off his pedestal and see him making love like any common man.
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It is not that I am so clever; it is that everyone else is so stupid.
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But to admire a strong person and to live under that strong person’s thumb are two different things.
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As to spelling the very frequent word though with six letters instead of two, it is impossible to discuss it, as it is outside the range of common sanity. In comparison such a monstrosity as phlegm for flem is merely disgusting.
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The joy in life is to be used for a purpose. I want to be used up when I die.
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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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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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Blasphemy and sedition meaning the truth about Church and State.
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The moment we face it frankly we are driven to the conclusion that the community has a right to put a price on the right to live in it ... If people are fit to live, let them live under decent human conditions. If they are not fit to live, kill them in a decent human way. Is it any wonder that some of us are driven to prescribe the lethal chamber as the solution for the hard cases which are at present made the excuse for dragging all the other cases down to their level, and the only solution that will create a sense of full social responsibility in modern populations?
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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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The man who has never made a mistake will never make anything else.
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With the exception of capitalism, there is nothing so revolting as revolution.
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Doing what needs to be done may not make you happy, but it will make you great.
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We are sick of war, we don't want to fight, And yet we gorge ourselves upon the dead.
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The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it.
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The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it soundslike.It isimpossible foran Englishmanto openhis mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.
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Only where there is pecuniary equality can the distinction of merit stand out.
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Has fear ever held a man back from anything he really wanted?
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A book is like a child: it is easier to bring it into the world than to control it when it is launched there.
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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.