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Quotes by George Bernard Shaw


Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
– George Bernard Shaw
A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.
– George Bernard Shaw
All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. There is the whole case against censorships in a nutshell.
– George Bernard Shaw
...with the black marble which gives the fireplace the air of a miniature family vault, to suggest early Victorian commercial respectability, belief in money, Bible fetichism, fear of hell always at war with fear of poverty, instinctive horror of the passionate character of art, love and Roman Catholic religion, and all the first fruits of plutocracy in the early generations of the industrial revolution.
– George Bernard Shaw
Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.
– George Bernard Shaw
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
– George Bernard Shaw
Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.
– George Bernard Shaw
A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.
– George Bernard Shaw
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
– George Bernard Shaw
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
– George Bernard Shaw
A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth.
– George Bernard Shaw
Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.
– George Bernard Shaw
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
– George Bernard Shaw
England and America are two countries separated by a common language.
– George Bernard Shaw
Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.
– George Bernard Shaw
Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.
– George Bernard Shaw
I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.
– George Bernard Shaw
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
– George Bernard Shaw
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
– George Bernard Shaw
If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a footrule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved.
– George Bernard Shaw
Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.
– George Bernard Shaw
Lack of money is the root of all evil.
– George Bernard Shaw
Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.
– George Bernard Shaw
Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.
– George Bernard Shaw
Take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then say it with the utmost levity.
– George Bernard Shaw
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
– George Bernard Shaw
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
– George Bernard Shaw
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
– George Bernard Shaw
When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.
– George Bernard Shaw
You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.
– George Bernard Shaw
Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
– George Bernard Shaw
You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, Why not?
– George Bernard Shaw
There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.
– George Bernard Shaw
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
– George Bernard Shaw
You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
– George Bernard Shaw
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.
– George Bernard Shaw
There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.
– George Bernard Shaw
Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another.
– George Bernard Shaw
One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.
– George Bernard Shaw
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essense of inhumanity.
– George Bernard Shaw
We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners.
– George Bernard Shaw
Do you know what a pessimist is? A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.
– George Bernard Shaw
Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
– George Bernard Shaw
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
– George Bernard Shaw
He who has never hoped can never despair.
– George Bernard Shaw
Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are more true: they are the only things that are true.
– George Bernard Shaw
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
– George Bernard Shaw
Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.
– George Bernard Shaw
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
– George Bernard Shaw
My way of joking is to tell the truth. It is the funniest joke in the world.
– George Bernard Shaw
Alcohol is a very necessary article... It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.
– George Bernard Shaw
I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.
– George Bernard Shaw
He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
– George Bernard Shaw
Beware of the man whose God is in the skies.
– George Bernard Shaw
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
– George Bernard Shaw
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
– George Bernard Shaw
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
– George Bernard Shaw
Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.
– George Bernard Shaw
The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
– George Bernard Shaw
Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.
– George Bernard Shaw
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
– George Bernard Shaw
Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.
– George Bernard Shaw
Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
– George Bernard Shaw
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
– George Bernard Shaw
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
– George Bernard Shaw
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
– George Bernard Shaw
It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.
– George Bernard Shaw
The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.
– George Bernard Shaw
What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn't come every day.
– George Bernard Shaw
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
– George Bernard Shaw
I never resist temptation because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.
– George Bernard Shaw
All professions are conspiracies against the laity.
– George Bernard Shaw
The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
– George Bernard Shaw
You use a glass mirror to see your face you use works of art to see your soul.
– George Bernard Shaw
Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
– George Bernard Shaw
When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.
– George Bernard Shaw
When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn't got any.
– George Bernard Shaw
What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
– George Bernard Shaw
What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?
– George Bernard Shaw
We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.
– George Bernard Shaw
We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.
– George Bernard Shaw
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
– George Bernard Shaw
Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die do not outlive yourself.
– George Bernard Shaw
Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.
– George Bernard Shaw
There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.
– George Bernard Shaw
The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.
– George Bernard Shaw
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
– George Bernard Shaw
The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.
– George Bernard Shaw
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
– George Bernard Shaw
The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.
– George Bernard Shaw
The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.
– George Bernard Shaw
The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.
– George Bernard Shaw
The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.
– George Bernard Shaw
The love of economy is the root of all virtue.
– George Bernard Shaw
The great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life.
– George Bernard Shaw
The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.
– George Bernard Shaw
The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.
– George Bernard Shaw
The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.
– George Bernard Shaw
Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.
– George Bernard Shaw
Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.
– George Bernard Shaw