George Bernard Shaw Quotes

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.

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.

When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.

When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn't got any.

It is nearly 50 years since I was assured by a conclave of doctors that if I did not eat meat I should die of starvation.

I make a fortune from criticizing the policy of the government, and then hand it over to the government in taxes to keep it going.

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

To be a champion you must live like one.

Man is the only animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.

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.

The heretic is always better dead. And mortal eyes cannot distinguish the saint from the heretic.

The best way to get your point across is to entertain.

We are the living graves of murdered beasts, slaughtered to satisfy our appetites. How can we hope in this world to attain the peace we say we are so anxious for?

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

Never repeat old grievances.

You accepted Allah or you had your throat cut by someone who did accept him, and who went to Paradise for having sent you to Hell.

We veneer civilization by doing unkind things in a kind way.

It is long and hard and painful to create life: it is short and easy to steal the life others have made.

The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.

Most people go to their grave with their music inside them.

It is the first duty of every man not to be poor.

It's a pity youth is wasted on the young.

Keep away from books and from men who get their ideas from books, and your own books will always be fresh.

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

Remember that the progress of the world depends on your knowing better than your elders.

Make money and the whole nation will conspire to call you a gentleman.

Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.

In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.

A man without an address is a vagabond; a man with two addresses is a libertine.

He who has never hoped can never despair

A man who loses his money gains, at the least, experience, and sometimes, something better.

It's just as unpleasant to get more than you bargain for as to get less.

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

In the right key one can say anything. In the wrong key, nothing: the only delicate part is the establishment of the key.

If in the library of your house you do not have the works of the ancient Greek writers, then you live in a house with no light.

Socialism is the same as Communism, only better English.

The righteous man takes his life in his hand whenever he utters the truth.

My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.

Morality is not respectability.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.

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

The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves.

The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization.

There was only one virtue, pugnacity; only one vice, pacifism. That is an essential condition of war.

I have studied him - the wonderful man - and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ he must be called the saviour of humanity.

You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.