George Bernard Shaw Quotes

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

Well, I've known over thirty men who've found out how to cure consumption. Why do people go on dying of it, Colly? Devilment I suppose!

The solid earth sways like the treacherous sea beneath the feet of men and spirits alike when the innocent are slain in the name of law, and their wrongs are undone by slandering the pure of heart.

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

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

My opportunities were still there nay they multiplied tenfold but the strength and youth to cope with them began to fail and to need eking out with the shifty cunning of experience.

Without art the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

Peace is not only better than war but infinitely more arduous.

I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.

All professions are a conspiracy against the country.

When people shake their heads because we are living in a restless age ask them how they would like to life in a stationary one and do without change.

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

Self-denial is not a virtue it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.

She had lost the art of conversation but not unfortunately the power of speech.

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

You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard but by attacking and getting well-hammered yourself.

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

You can lose a man like that by your own death but not by his.

There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.

I am only a beer teetotaller not a champagne teetotaller.

It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him.

fights you on patriotic principles he robs you on business principles he enslaves you on imperial principles.

Men are wise in proportion not to their experience but to their capacity for experience.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

Fashions after all are only induced epidemics.

What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do.

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.

Give a man health and a course to steer and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not.

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

The art of government is the organization of idolatry.

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

Martyrdom - the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood.

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them but to be indifferent to them that's the essence of inhumanity.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of Hell.

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.

It is assumed that the woman must wait motionless until she is wooed. That is how the spider waits for the fly.

The fickleness of the woman I love is equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

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

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

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

I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worthwhile.

An election is a moral horror as bad as a battle except for the blood a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.

A day's work is a day's work neither more nor less and the man who does it needs a day's sustenance a night's repose and due leisure whether he be painter or ploughman.

Parentage is a very important profession but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interests of the Children.

The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the parents' first duty.

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

The philosopher is Nature's pilot - and there you have our difference to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.

He knows nothing he thinks he knows everything - that clearly points to a political career.