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Quotations for Every Mood





Quotations of selected author

George Bernard Shaw

1856 - 1950. Irish writer and playwriter, author of "Pygmalion", music, art, and drama critic .

1. "[...] any fool can make a discovery. Every baby has to discover more in the first years of its life than Roger Bacon ever discovered in his laboratory."

source: "Back to Methuselah"

categories: Science and Technology

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

categories: Truth and Falsity

3. "When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty."

source: "Caesar and Cleopatra"

categories: Wisdom and Stupidity

4. "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."

source: "Pygmalion"

categories: Life and Death

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

source: "Candida"

categories: Happiness

6. "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."

categories: Manners and Ethics

7. "Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation."

source: "Man and Superman"

categories: Authority, Government -:- Manners and Ethics

8. "There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it."

categories: God and Religion

9. "There is nothing more dangerous than the conscience of a bigot."

categories: Manners and Ethics -:- Sin and Conscience

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

categories: Dreams and Desires

11. "There are two things necessary to Salvation.... Money and gunpowder."

source: "Major Barbara"

categories: Various

12. "There are only two qualities in the world: efficiency and inefficiency, and only two sorts of people: the efficient and the inefficient."

source: "John Bull's Other Island"

categories: Various

13. "The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: thats the essence of inhumanity."

source: "The Devil's Disciple"

categories: Nature and Animals -:- Sin and Conscience

14. "The surest way to ruin a man who doesn't know how to handle money is to give him some."

source: "Heartbreak House"

categories: Richness and Money

15. "The secret of success is to offend the greatest number of people."

categories: Success and Fame

16. "The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation."

source: "Parents and Children"

categories: Happiness -:- Work and Laziness

17. "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. All progress, therefore, depends upon the unreasonable man."

categories: Intellect, Judgement

18. "The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."

categories: Various

19. "The only time my education was interrupted was when I was in school."

categories: Education

20. "The novelties of one generation are only the resuscitated fashions of the generation before last."

categories: Manners and Ethics

21. "The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is."

source: "Man and Superman"

categories: Manners and Ethics

22. "The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine."

source: "Collected Letters"

categories: Richness and Money

23. "The great advantage of a hotel is that it's a refuge from home life."

source: "You Never Can Tell"

categories: Family and Loneliness

24. "The golden rule is that there are no golden rules."

categories: Various

25. "The function of the actor is to make the audience imagine for the moment that real things are happening to real people."

categories: Art and Culture -:- Reality and Imagination

26. "The customs of your tribe are not laws of nature."

categories: Law and Crime -:- Nature and Animals

27. "The buried truth germinates and breaks through to the light."

source: "The Doctor?s Dilemma"

categories: Truth and Falsity

28. "Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get."

source: "Man and Superman"

categories: Various

29. "Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time."

categories: Defeates and Mistakes -:- Success and Fame

30. "Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn."

source: "Back to Methuselah"

categories: Manners and Ethics -:- Oration and Silence

31. "Religion is a great force: the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows don't understand is that you must get at a man through his own religion and not through yours."

source: "Getting Married"

categories: God and Religion

32. "Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock."

source: "Getting Married"

categories: Human -:- Nature and Animals

33. "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."

categories: Success and Fame

34. "Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it."

categories: Patriotism

35. "Parentage is a very important profession; but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of children."

categories: Family and Loneliness

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

categories: Truth and Falsity -:- Wit and Humor

37. "My speciality is being right when other people are wrong."

source: "You Never Can Tell"

categories: Truth and Falsity -:- Knowledge, Ignorance

38. "My rank is the highest known in Switzerland: I am a free citizen."

source: "Arms and the Man"

categories: Authority, Government -:- Freedom and Servitude

39. "Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion. When they refuse to be governed by law or persuasion, they have to be governed by force or fraud, or both."

source: "Misalliance"

categories: Authority, Government -:- Law and Crime

40. "Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity."

categories: Marriage

41. "Live in contact with dreams and you will get something of their charm: live in contact with facts and you will get something of their brutality. I wish I could find a country to live in where the facts were not brutal and the dreams not real."

source: "John Bull's Other Island"

categories: Dreams and Desires -:- Reality and Imagination

42. "Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent."

source: "Man and Superman"

categories: Life and Death

43. "Life isn't about finding yourself, it's about creating yourself."

categories: Life and Death

44. "Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful."

source: "Back to Methuselah"

categories: Life and Death

45. "Life is a disease; and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You are always at the crisis: I am always in the convalescent stage."

source: "Back to Methuselah"

categories: Health and Alcohol -:- Life and Death

46. "Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."

source: "The Doctor's Dilemma"

categories: Joy and Sadness -:- Life and Death -:- Wit and Humor

47. "Just as the liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe any one else."

categories: Manners and Ethics -:- Truth and Falsity

48. "It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date."

source: "Fanny's First Play"

categories: Youth and Age

49. "It is not enough to know what is good: you must be able to do it."

source: "Back to Methuselah"

categories: Good and Evil

50. "It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid."

source: "Man and Superman"

categories: Manners and Ethics -:- Wisdom and Stupidity

51. "It is a woman's business to get married as soon as possible, and a man's to keep unmarried as long as he can."

source: "Man and Superman"

categories: Marriage -:- Woman and Man

52. "In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence and famine."

source: "Man and Superman"

categories: Life and Death

53. "Imagination is the beginning of creation."

categories: Reality and Imagination

54. "If you have an apple and I have an apple, and we exchange apples, we both still only have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea, and we exchange ideas, we each now have two ideas."

categories: Intellect, Judgement -:- Various

55. "If marriages were made by putting all the men's names into one sack and the women's names into another, and having them taken out by a blindfolded child like lottery numbers, there would be just as high a percentage of happy marriages as we have here in England."

source: "Misalliance"

categories: Happiness -:- Marriage

56. "I never resist temptation because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me."

source: "The Apple Cart"

categories: Manners and Ethics

57. "Home is the girl's prison and the woman's workhouse."

source: "Man and Superman"

categories: Family and Loneliness -:- Woman and Man

58. "He who has never hoped can never despair."

source: "Caesar and Cleopatra"

categories: Optimism and Hope

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

categories: Education

60. "He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career."

source: "Major Barbara"

categories: Politics and Diplomacy -:- Knowledge, Ignorance

61. "Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated."

categories: Bravery and Fear -:- Friendship and Hostility -:- Anger

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

source: "Captain Brassbound's Conversion"

categories: Happiness

63. "Freedom, my good girl, means being able to count on how other people will behave."

source: "Misalliance"

categories: Freedom and Servitude

64. "Everybody who does not live in a prostitute's bed and on a diet of cocaine snow is called an ascetic nowadays."

categories: Manners and Ethics

65. "Englishmen never will be slaves: they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allow them to do."

source: "Man and Superman"

categories: Authority, Government -:- Freedom and Servitude -:- History and Nations

66. "Do you know what a pessimist is? A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it."

source: "An Unsocial Socialist"

categories: Optimism and Hope

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

source: "Man and Superman"

categories: Good and Evil

68. "Dancing: The vertical expression of a horizontal desire legalized by music."

categories: Art and Culture -:- Dreams and Desires

69. "But a lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth."

source: "Man and Superman"

categories: Happiness

70. "Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the airplane, the pessimist invents the parachute."

categories: Optimism and Hope

71. "Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself."

source: "Man and Superman"

categories: Forgiveness

72. "Assassination is the extreme form of censorship."

categories: Law and Crime

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

source: "Overruled"

categories: Dreams and Desires

74. "Animals are my friends ... and I don't eat my friends."

categories: Nature and Animals

75. "An Irishman's heart is nothing but his imagination."

source: "John Bull's Other Island"

categories: History and Nations -:- Reality and Imagination

76. "All great truths begin as blasphemies."

categories: Truth and Falsity

77. "All autobiographies are lies. I do not mean unconscious, unintentional lies: I mean deliberate lies."

categories: Egoism -:- Truth and Falsity

78. "A mere fact will never stop an Englishman."

categories: History and Nations -:- Various

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

categories: Authority, Government -:- Richness and Money

80. "A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic."

categories: Manners and Ethics

81. "A conquered nation is like a man with cancer: he can think of nothing else."

source: "John Bull's Other Island"

categories: Freedom and Servitude -:- History and Nations

82. "A book is like a child: it is easier to bring it into the world than to control it when it is launched there."

categories: Art and Culture -:- Family and Loneliness


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