George Bernard Shaw Quotes

I work as my father drank.

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

A learned man is an idler who kills time by study.

How can she? She's incapable of understanding anything. Besides, do any of us understand what we are...

If an imaginative boy has a sufficiently rich mother who has intelligence, personal grace, dignity o...

MRS PEARCE. Mr Higgins: youre tempting the girl. It’s not right. She should think of the future.HIGG...

The weak may not be admired and hero-worshipped; but they are by no means disliked or shunned; and t...

There's only one way of escaping trouble; and that's killing things." Henry Higgins, Act V, Pygmalio...

I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, ...

HIGGINS. The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular ...

HIGGINS. Have you no morals, man?DOOLITTLE [unabashed] Cant afford them, Governor. Neither could you...

HOSTESS. Oh, nonsense! She speaks English perfectly.NEPOMMUCK. Too perfectly. Can you shew me any En...

HIGGINS [aggrieved] Do you mean that my language is improper?MRS HIGGINS. No, dearest: it would be q...

A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds has no right to be anywhere - no right to l...

What you are to do without me I cannot imagine.

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

I know your head aches. I know you're tired. I know your nerves are as raw as meat in a butcher's wi...

You don't learn to hold your own by standing on guard but by attacking and getting well hammered y...

The liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyon...

In your dread of dictators you established a state of society in which every ward boss is a dictator...

CHARTERIS [unfolding his arms in terror] No, please. Dont. As a philosopher, it’s my business to tel...

[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, ...

As it is not a settled question, you must clear your mind of the fancy withwhich we all begin as chi...

Well, I've known over thirty men who've found out how to cure consumption. Why do people go on dying...

I never asked to be a king: it was pushed on me. So if you are going to say 'Son of St Louis: gird o...

The solid earth sways like the treacherous sea beneath the feet of men and spirits alike when the in...

Don't think you can frighten me by telling me that I am alone. France is alone. God is alone. And th...

We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!

The truth sticks in our throats with all the sauces it is served with: it will never go down until w...

Well, what do they all amount to, these kings and captains and bishops and lawyers and such like? Th...

Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of a...

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. T...

But I cant stand saying one thing when everyone knows I mean another. Whats the use in such hypocris...

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutio...

But whether the risks to which liberty exposes us are moral or physical our right to liberty involve...

The reason why the continental European is, to the Englishman or American, so surprisingly ignorant ...

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The c...

There is, on the whole, nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school. To be...

What is the matter with universities is that the students are school children, whereas it is of the ...

Nobody could stand an eternity of Heaven.

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the...

Your friends are all the dullest dogs I know. They are not beautiful: they are only decorated. They ...

Heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation

The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living...

Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very peopl...

You think, because you have a purpose, Nature must have one. You might as well expect it to have fin...

You may remember that on earth—though of course we never confessed it—the death of anyone we knew, e...

The most distinguished persons become more revolutionary as they grow older.

Some donkeys have amazing luck.

There is no love sincerer than the love of food.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

THE DEVIL. As far as I went, yes. But I will now go further, and confess to you that men get tired o...

...Hell is the home of the unreal and of the seekers for happiness. It is the only refuge from heave...

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.

Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned. May not one lost soul be permit...

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different becaus...

The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.

Old-fashioned people think you can have a soul without money. They think the less money you have, th...

A man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself.

If we women were particular about men's characters, we should never get married at all.

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible ...

You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most tr...

The word morality, if we met it in the Bible, would surprise us as much as the word telephone or mot...

And if I am further pressed to declare straightforwardly whether I mean to disparage these authoriti...

I am sorry to have to introduce the subject of Christmas into these articles. It is an indecent subj...

Loyalty in a critic is corruption.

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without produ...

Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than t...

[H]e is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.

You see things; you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.

People see a Macbeth film. They imagine they have seen Macbeth, and don't want to see it again; so w...

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drun...

The primitive idea of justice is partly legalized revenge and partly expiation by sacrifice. It work...

A man learns to skate by staggering about and making a fool of himself. Indeed he progresses in all ...

What we want to see is the child in pursuit of the knowledge not the knowledge in pursuit of the chi...

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life ...

A pessimist? A man who thinks everybody as nasty as himself and hates them for it.

Morality is not respectability.

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were ...

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them but to be indifferent to them that'...

The whole world is strewn with snares traps gins and pitfalls for the capture of men by women.

I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per cent an idiot.

At present there is not a single credible established religion in the world.

Englishmen never will be slaves they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allo...

Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn’t really hurt.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force...

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of Hell.

You have learned something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When ...

Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty what is the ...

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds, cannot change anythi...

Very few people can afford to be poor.