George Bernard Shaw Quotes

What is the use of straining after an amiable view of things, when a cynical view is most likely to be the true one?.

As well consult a butcher on the value of vegetarianism as a doctor on the worth of vaccination.

There is no accomplishment so easy to acquire as politeness and none more profitable.

Go anywhere in England where there are natural wholesome, contented and really nice English people; and what do you find? That the stables are the real centre of the household.

We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence... on pain of liquidation.

Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice

If you injure your neighbour, better not do it by halves.

People expect too much of one year and too little of ten.

Whisky is liquid sunshine.

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

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

Life is a flame that is always burning itself out; but it catches fire again every time a child is born. Life is greater than death, and hope than despair.

Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

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.

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.

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

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

Idiots are always in favour of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favour of equality.

The quality of a play is the quality of its ideas.

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.

The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing.

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

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.

I do not want to make my stomach a graveyard of dead animals.

Though all society is founded on intolerance, all improvement is founded on tolerance.

I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.

An Englishman does everything on principle: he fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles.

A doctor's reputation is made by the number of eminent men who die under his care.

Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced by the inferior.

A healthy nation is as unconscious of its nationality as a healthy man of his bones. But if you break a person's nationality it will think of nothing else but getting it set again.

Hate is the revenge of a coward intimidated.

The devil can quote Shakespeare for his own purpose.

A moderately honest man with a moderately faithful wife, moderate drinkers both, in a moderately healthy house: that is the true middle class unit.

I like to quote myself frequently and often, it makes me sound much more intelligent than I actually am.

Woman's happiness begins with her first love and ends about then

A nap, my friend, is a brief period of sleep which overtakes superannuated persons when they endeavor to entertain unwelcome visitors or to listen to scientific lectures.

Money is a most important thing in the world.

A modern gentleman [rich person] is necessarily the enemy of his country. Even in war he does not fight to defend it, but to prevent his power of preying on it from passing to a foreigner.

English is the easiest language to speak badly.

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

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship; and it seems hard to justify an incitement to it on anti-censorial principles.

My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably.

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

Take the utmost care to get well born and well brought up.

Englishmen never will be slaves; they are free to do whatever the government and public opinion allow them.

Oh, come! That boot is on the other leg. Why should you call me to account for eating decently? If I battened on the scorched corpses of animals, you might well ask me why I did that

Jesus remains unshaken as the practical man; and we stand exposed as the fools, the blunderers, the unpractical visionaries.

An American has no sense of privacy. He does not know what it means.There is no such thing in the country.