George Bernard Shaw Quotes

What we want to see is the child in pursuit of the knowledge not the knowledge in pursuit of the child.

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.

Heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation

You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard but by attacking and getting well hammered yourself.

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

From Mozart I learnt to say important things in a conversational way.

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

Your friends are all the dullest dogs I know. They are not beautiful: they are only decorated. They are not clean: they are only shaved and starched. They are not dignified: they are only fashionably dressed. They are not educated: they are only college passmen. They are not religious: they are only pewrenters. They are not moral: they are only conventional. They are not virtuous: they are only cowardly. They are not even vicious: they are only “frail.” They are not artistic: they are only lascivious. They are not prosperous: they are only rich. They are not loyal, they are only servile; not dutiful, only sheepish; not public spirited, only patriotic; not courageous, only quarrelsome; not determined, only obstinate; not masterful, only domineering; not self-controlled, only obtuse; not self-respecting, only vain; not kind, only sentimental; not social, only gregarious; not considerate, only polite; not intelligent, only opinionated; not progressive, only factious; not imaginative, only superstitious; not just, only vindictive; not generous, only propitiatory; not disciplined, only cowed; and not truthful at all: liars every one of them, to the very backbone of their souls.

Loyalty in a critic is corruption.

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.

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

I am only a beer teetotaller not a champagne teetotaller.

[H]e is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.

HIGGINS. The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.

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

Doing what needs to be done may not make you happy, but it will make you great.

Beware of the man whose God is in the skies.

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.

Morality is not respectability.

A great devotee of the gospel of getting on.

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

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

You think, because you have a purpose, Nature must have one. You might as well expect it to have fingers and toes because you do.

But I cant stand saying one thing when everyone knows I mean another. Whats the use in such hypocrisy? If people arrange the world that way for women, theres no good pretending it’s arranged the other way...

We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies.

A learned man is an idler who kills time by study.

Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.

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.

Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it....

I need not repeat familiar arguments about the waste of teachers' time, and the difficulties thrown in the way of English children trying to learn their own language; or the fact that nobody without a visual memory for words ever succeeds in spelling conventionally, however highly educated he or she may be.

I'm not a teacher: only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead - ahead of myself as well as you.

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

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.

How we lavish our money and worship on Shakespeare without in the least knowing why!

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

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

Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error.

Virtue consists not in abstaining from vice but in not desiring it.

What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattery.

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

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

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.

You can lose a man like that by your own death but not by his.

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

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport: wlien the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

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

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.

Men are wise in proportion not to their experience but to their capacity for experience.

If you go to heaven without being naturally qualified for it you will not enjoy it there.

Well, what do they all amount to, these kings and captains and bishops and lawyers and such like? They just leave you in the ditch to bleed to death; and the next thing is, you meet them down there, for all the airs they give themselves.

This is true joy of life-the being used for a purpose that is recognized by yourself as a right one instead of being a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another.

Never believe anything a writer tells you about himself. A man comes to believe in the end the lies he tells himself about himself.

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.

Most people do not pray they only beg.

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

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of Hell.

The man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound.The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!