Quotes by George Bernard Shaw

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

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

"Life would be tolerable but for its amusements."

"I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake."

"Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles."

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

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

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

"Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo."

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

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

"Martyrdom: The only way a man can become famous without ability."

"There is no love sincerer than the love of food."

"The love of economy is the root of all virtue."

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

"It is most unwise for people in love to marry."

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

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

"First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity."

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

"Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart's desire the other is to get it."

"Oh, the tiger will love you. There is no sincerer love than the love of food."

"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."

"Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love."

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

"Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder."

"Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics."

"The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor."

"A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold."

"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it."

"Beware of false knowledge it is more dangerous than ignorance."

"It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics."

"An index is a great leveller."

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

"If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion."

"Every man over forty is a scoundrel."

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

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

"We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins."

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

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

"If women were particular about men's characters, they would never get married at all."

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

"All great truths begin as blasphemies."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Assassination is the extreme form of censorship."

"Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance."

"There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage."

"Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us."

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

"If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance."

"A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out."

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

"We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money."

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

"Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world."

"I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy."

"Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable."

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

"The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react."

"When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn't got any."

"Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability."

"Clever and attractive women do not want to vote they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men."

"I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence."

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

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

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

"Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force."

"Power does not corrupt men fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power."

"She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech."

"If you go to Heaven without being naturally qualified for it, you will not enjoy yourself there."

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

"Hell is full of musical amateurs."

"A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell."

"I'm an atheist and I thank God for it."

"The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there."

"The man who listens to Reason is lost: Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her."

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

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

"A man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage."

"What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?"

"When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part."

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

"It's easier to replace a dead man than a good picture."

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

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

"Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire."

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

"Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open."

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

"Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family."

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

"A happy family is but an earlier heaven."

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

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

"Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."

"The art of government is the organisation of idolatry."

"A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes."

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

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

"We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future."

"There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find an Englishman doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles."

"The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office."

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

"The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business."

"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."

"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing."

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

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

"My reputation grows with every failure."

"Never fret for an only son, the idea of failure will never occur to him."

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

"It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace."

"Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness."

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

"Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die do not outlive yourself."

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

"Gambling promises the poor what Property performs for the rich."

"Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness."

"Lack of money is the root of all evil."

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

"I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad."

"Beauty is all very well at first sight, but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?"

"Beauty is all very well at first sight but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?"

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

"Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive."

"England and America are two countries separated by the same language."

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

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

"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."

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

"I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people."

"Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous."

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

"Science never solves a problem without creating ten more."

"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education."

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

"In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it's more dangerous to lose than to win."

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

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

"Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal your own."

"He's a man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage."

"Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none."

"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."

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

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."

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

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

"The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.… It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth, without making some other Englishman despise him."

"Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad."

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