George Bernard Shaw

"Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week."

George Bernard Shaw

Intellect, Judgement

Various

"No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means."

George Bernard Shaw

Egoism

God and Religion

"Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children."

George Bernard Shaw

Family and Loneliness

Youth and Age

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

George Bernard Shaw

Anger

Courage and Fear

Friendship and Hostility

"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."

George Bernard Shaw "Getting Married"

Human

Nature and Animals

"Imagination is the beginning of creation."

George Bernard Shaw

Reality and Imagination

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

George Bernard Shaw "John Bull's Other Island"

History and Nations

Reality and Imagination

"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."

George Bernard Shaw "John Bull's Other Island"

Dreams and Desires

Reality and Imagination

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

George Bernard Shaw

Art and Culture

Family and Loneliness

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

George Bernard Shaw "Captain Brassbound's Conversion"

Happiness

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

George Bernard Shaw "Major Barbara"

Various

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

George Bernard Shaw

Various

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

George Bernard Shaw

Egoism

Truth and Falsity

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

George Bernard Shaw

Family and Loneliness

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

George Bernard Shaw "Back to Methuselah"

Good and Evil

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

George Bernard Shaw

Various

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

George Bernard Shaw "The Doctor's Dilemma"

Truth and Falsity

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

George Bernard Shaw "Misalliance"

Freedom and Servitude

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

George Bernard Shaw "Parents and Children"

Happiness

Work and Laziness

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

George Bernard Shaw "Man and Superman"

Manners and Ethics

Wisdom and Stupidity

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

George Bernard Shaw "Man and Superman"

Authority, Government

Manners and Ethics

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

George Bernard Shaw "Back to Methuselah"

Life and Death

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

George Bernard Shaw "Heartbreak House"

Richness and Money

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

George Bernard Shaw

Manners and Ethics

Sin and Conscience

"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."

George Bernard Shaw "Misalliance"

Happiness

Marriage

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

George Bernard Shaw "Collected Letters"

Richness and Money

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

George Bernard Shaw "Arms and the Man"

Authority, Government

Freedom and Servitude

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

George Bernard Shaw

Manners and Ethics

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

George Bernard Shaw "Man and Superman"

Life and Death

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

George Bernard Shaw

Art and Culture

Reality and Imagination

"Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn."

George Bernard Shaw "Back to Methuselah"

Manners and Ethics

Oration and Silence

"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."

George Bernard Shaw "Getting Married"

God and Religion

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

George Bernard Shaw "John Bull's Other Island"

Freedom and Servitude

History and Nations

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

George Bernard Shaw "Man and Superman"

Manners and Ethics

"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."

George Bernard Shaw "Misalliance"

Authority, Government

Law and Crime

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

George Bernard Shaw "Man and Superman"

Authority, Government

Freedom and Servitude

History and Nations

"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."

George Bernard Shaw "Back to Methuselah"

Health and Alcohol

Life and Death

"A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic."

George Bernard Shaw

Manners and Ethics

"A mere fact will never stop an Englishman."

George Bernard Shaw

History and Nations

Various

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

George Bernard Shaw

Defeates and Mistakes

Success and Fame

"[...] 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."

George Bernard Shaw "Back to Methuselah"

Science and Technology

"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."

George Bernard Shaw "Man and Superman"

Life and Death

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

George Bernard Shaw "The Apple Cart"

Manners and Ethics

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

George Bernard Shaw "Fanny's First Play"

Youth and Age

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

George Bernard Shaw "An Unsocial Socialist"

Optimism and Hope

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

George Bernard Shaw "John Bull's Other Island"

Various

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

George Bernard Shaw "Caesar and Cleopatra"

Wisdom and Stupidity

"All great truths begin as blasphemies."

George Bernard Shaw

Truth and Falsity