George Bernard Shaw
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"George Bernard Shaw" was an Irish people/Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music journalism/music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays. He was also an essayist, novelist and short story writer. Nearly all his writings address prevailing social problems with a vein of comedy which makes their stark themes more palatable. Issues which engaged Shaw's attention included education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege.

He was most angered by what he perceived as the exploitation of the working class. An ardent Socialism/socialist, Shaw wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society. He became an accomplished orator in the furtherance of its causes, which included gaining gender equality/equal rights for men and women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding private ownership of productive land, and promoting healthy lifestyles. For a short time he was active in local politics, serving on the Metropolitan Borough of St Pancras/St Pancras Vestry.

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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.

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.

I've posed nude for a photographer in the manner of Rodin's Thinker, but I merely looked constipated.

Hell is to drift; heaven is to steer.

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.

Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.

If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a footrule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved.

The seven deadly sins ... Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven milestones from man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the milestones are lifted.

We must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

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

Fashions are the only induced epidemics, proving that epidemics can be induced by tradesmen.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

Life is a disease; and the only diference between one another is the stage of the disease at which he lives.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

We have not lost faith, but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession.

A dramatic critic is a man who leaves no turn unstoned.

Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time.

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

Alcohol is a very necessary article... It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.

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

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

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.

What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness.

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

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.

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

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.

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

The liar's punishment ... is that he cannot believe anyone else.

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

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.

Reviewing has one advantage over suicide: in suicide you take it out on yourself; in reviewing you take it out on other people.

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?

Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich--something for nothing.

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

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

It took me twenty years of studied self-restraint, aided by the natural decay of my faculties, to make myself dull enough to be accepted as a serious person by the British public.

It's so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.

This is the true joy in life - being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one...

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth.

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

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

When a man wants to murder a tiger, it's called sport; when the tiger wants to murder him it's called ferocity.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.

The Churches must learn humility as well as teach it.

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

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

In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.

Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.

In the news trenches, always he battled to be accurately first, ... Ed Turner was walking ethics.

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.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in the world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.

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

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

Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.

Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it.

To be clever enough to get a great deal of money, one must be stupid enough to want it.

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

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

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.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

You can almost reach out and touch Ed Turner's impact on CNN. His standards were so high. The things that this network does routinely, and the kinds of people that work for CNN ... are a testament to what Ed Turner stood for.

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

I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.

Nobel prize money is a lifebelt thrown to a swimmer who has already reached the shore in safety.

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; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

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

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

The 100% American is 99% an idiot.

Lack of money is the root of all evil.

England and America are two countries separated by a common language.

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

What I saw were two F-16 jets and they were circling overhead a single-engine plane and other jet fighter pilots were banking very quickly. And I saw them fire two warning flares in the direction of the single-engine plane.

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

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

I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor.

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

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

There are scores of thousands of human insects who are ready at a moment's notice to reveal the will of God on every possible subject.

If you leave the smallest corner of your mind open for a moment, other people's opinions will rush in from all quarters.

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.

A learned man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge: it is more dangerous than ignorance.

You see things, and you say 'Why?' But I dream things that never were, and say 'Why not?

Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.

It is most unwise for people in love to marry.

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.

Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.

The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.

If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.

Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.

What is virtue but the trades unionism of the married.

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.

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

I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.

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

A man ought to be able to be fond of his wife without making a fool of himself about her.

Nothing ever is done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

We should have had socialism already, but for the socialists.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

Beware of the man whose God is in the skies.

Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.

Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

The chief objection of playing wind instruments is that it prolongs the life of the player.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

The love of money is the root of all virtue.

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

I want to be all used up when I die.

If more than ten percent of the population likes a painting it should be burned, for it must be bad.

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

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

Successful people in this world are those who get up and look for circumstances they want. If they can't find them, they make them.

My reputation grows with every failure.

I was brought up in that other service; but I knew from the first that the Devil was my natural master and captain and friend. I saw that he was in the right, and that the world cringed to his conqueror only from fear.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It is the funniest joke in the world.

If you can't appreciate what you've got, then you had better get what you can appreciate.

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

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than saying a drunken man is happier than a sober man.

I'd like to be the person I could have been but never was.

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

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

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

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

Audacious ribald: your laughter will finish in hideous boredom before morning.

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.

History, sir, will tell lies, as usual.

All my life, affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.

There is no love sincerer than the love of food.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

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

He who can, does. He who cannot teaches.

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

Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

A pessimist thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.

All censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships.

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

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

People always get tired of one another. I grow tired of myself whenever I am left alone for ten minutes, and I am certain that I am fonder of myself than anyone can be of another person.

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

You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'

Martyrdom is the only way a person can become famous without ability.

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

He who has never hoped can never despair.

If all the economists in the world were laid end to end, they wouldn't reach any conclusion.

Success covers a multitude of blunders.

What God hath joined together no man shall put asunder: God will take care of that.

He never ran from personal pain, but he rushed to help you with yours, ... He was rabbi, priest, chaplain and mullah when he was not morale officer-in-chief.

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

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

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

You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

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

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

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

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

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

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.

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

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

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

Crude classifications and false generalizations are the curse of organized life.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist.

Let a short Act of Parliament be passed, placing all street musicians outside the protection of the law, so that any citizen may assail them with stones, sticks, knives, pistols, or bombs without incurring any penalties.

There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

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

Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are more true: they are the only things that are true.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

Animals are my friends, and I don't eat my friends.

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

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