Quotes by George Bernard Shaw

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

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

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

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

Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.

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

Beware of the man whose God is in the skies.

I like a bit of mongrel myself, whether it's a man or a dog.

Lack of money is the root of of all evil.

God is on the side of the big battalions.

The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization.

Two things define you: your patience when you have nothing and your attitude when you have everything.

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

He who has never hoped can never despair.

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

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

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

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

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.

It is most unwise for people in love to marry.

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.

No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.

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.

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound.

We sing in a church, why can we not dance there?

The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood.

Decency is indecency's conspiracy of silence.

Decency cannot be discussed without indecency!

The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown.

In art, as in politics, there is no such thing as gratitude.

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

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

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

Forget about likes and dislikes. They are of no consequence. Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.

A man's interest in the world is only an overflow from his interest in himself.

When people shake their heads because we are living in a restless age, ask them how they would like to live in a stationary one, and do without change.

Do not try to live forever, you will not succeed.

People exaggerate the value of things they haven't got: everybody worships truth and unselfishness because they have no experience with them.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. 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.

Most people go to their grave with their music inside them.

Science, never solves a problem without creating ten more.

Independence? That's middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

Only fools repeat the same things over and over, expecting to obtain different results.

Hinduism is so elastic and subtle that the most profound Methodist and crudest Idolator are equally at home with it.

A good intention is like the seed of a tree whose fruit we do not know.

Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity.

This planet is obviously being used as an insane asylum by other planets.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books nobody reads.

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

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

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

He who has never hoped, can never despair.

This is the true joy of life, the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.

I have nothing to offer you but my strength for your defence, my honesty for your surety, my ability and industry for your livelihood, and my authority and position for your dignity. That is all it becomes a man to offer a woman.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

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

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

Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem without creating ten more.

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

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

Life is a flame that is always burning itself out, but it catches fire again everytime a child is born.

It is easy -- terribly easy -- to shake a man's faith in himself. To take advantage of that, to break a man's spirit is devil's work.

When you read a biography remember that the truth is never fit for publication.

Most of the money given by rich people in 'charity' is made up of conscience money, 'ransom,' political bribery, and bids for titles.... One buys moral credit by signing a cheque, which is easier than turning a prayer wheel.

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

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

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

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

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

Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why. ' I dream of things that never were, and say, 'Why not?'

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

The heart of an Irishman is nothing but his imagination.

People get tired of everything, and of nothing sooner than of what they most like.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read.

Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in short, is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.

Hell is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.

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

Revelations: A curious record of the visions of a drug addict.

Boasting about modesty is typical of the English.

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

The worst cliques are those which consist of one man.

A man's own self is the last person to believe in him, and is harder to cheat than the rest of the world.

My opportunities were still there, nay, they multiplied tenfold; but the strength and youth to cope with them began to fail, and to need eking out with the shifty cunning of experience.

I was convinced that Ceylon is the cradle of the human race because everybody there looks an original. All other nations are obviously mass produced.

We have in England a curious belief in first-rate people, meaning all the people we do not know; and this consoles us for the undeniable second-rateness of the people we do know.

Decency is indecency's conspiracy of silence.

There is always danger for those who are afraid.

Truth telling is not compatible with the defence of the realm.

Just as I cannot remember any time when I could not read and write, I cannot remember any time when I did not exercise my imagination in daydreams about women.

No sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus.

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

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

We educate one another; and we cannot do this if half of us consider the other half not good enough to talk to.

When a prisoner sees the door of his dungeon open, he dashes for it without stopping to think where he shall get his dinner outside.

The trouble with the media is that it seems unable to distinguish between the end of the world and a bicycle accident.

Nobody could stand an eternity of Heaven.

What is wrong with the prosaic Englishman is what is wrong with the prosaic men of all countries: stupidity.

There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle.

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

Vitality is a woman is a blind fury of creation.

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

In gambling the many must lose in order that the few may win.

A man's behaviour may be quite harmless and even beneficial, when he ismorally behaving like a scoundrel. And he may do great harm when he is morally acting on the highest principles.

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

Our ideals, like the gods of old, are constantly demanding human sacrifices.

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.

Imprisonment, as it exists today, is a worse crime than any of those committed by its victims.

I can't talk religion to a man with bodily hunger in his eyes.

If you demand my authorities for this and that, I must reply that only those who have never hunted up the authorities as I have believe that there is any authority who is not contradicted flatly by some other authority.

It is the inefficiency and sham of ... our schools ... that save us from being dashed on the rocks of false doctrine instead of drifting down the midstream of mere ignorance.

Indifference is the essence of inhumanity.

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 do not say a thing in an irritating way, you may as well not say it at all because people will not trouble themselves about anything that does not trouble them.

The Jews generally give value. They make you pay; but they deliver the goods. In my experience the men who want something for nothing are invariably Christians.

Some persons, by hating vice too much, come to love men too little. Hatred is self-punishment. Hatred is the cowards revenge for being intimidated.

Hate is the revenge of a coward intimidated.

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

I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.

Only Lawyers and mental defectives are automatically exempt for jury duty.

Worst of all, there is no sign of any relaxation of antisemitism. Logically it has nothing to do with Fascism. But the human race is imitative rather than logical; and as Fascism spreads antisemitism spreads.

Martyrdom is the only path to immortality that requires no talent whatsoever.

It is ridiculous to say that art has nothing to do with morality. What is true is that the artist's business is not that of the policeman.

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.

Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity, and beauty as conspicuously as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness, and ugliness.

I loathe the mess of mean superstitions and misunderstood prophecies which is still rammed down the throats of children under the name of Christianity.

He never does a proper thing without giving an improper reason for it.

We must not stay as we are, doing always what was done last time; or we shall stick in the mud.

A healthy nation is as unconscious of its nationality as a healthy man of his bones. But if you break a person's nationality it will think of nothing else but getting it set again.

Marry Ann; and at the end of a week you'll find no more inspiration in her than in a plate of muffins.

My own education has been entirely controversial: that is why I know what I am writing about; and appear eccentric to dogmatically educated Old School Ties whose heads are stuffed with obsolete shibboleths.

Principles without programs are platitudes.

A man's interest in the world is only an overflow from his interest in himself.

There is no accomplishment so easy to acquire as politeness and none more profitable.

To a professional critic (I have been one myself) theatre-going is the curse of Adam. The play is the evil he is paid to endure in the sweat of his brow; and the sooner it is over, the better.

As 99 per cent of English authors and 100 per cent of American ones authors are just such imbeciles, managers and publishers make a practice of asking for every right the author possesses.

It is clear that a novel cannot be too bad to be worth publishing... It certainly is possible for a novel to be too good to be worth publishing.

Most of my recent plays were written in the railway train between Hatfield and Kings Cross. I write anywhere, on the top of omnibuses or wherever I may be; it is all the same to me.

Every dream is a prophecy: every jest is an earnest in the womb of Time.

The vilest abortionist is he who attempts to mould a child's character.

Patriotism is a word which always commemorates a robbery.

Who is this Baby Ruth? And what does she do?

I want to destroy ownership in order that possession and enjoyment may be raised to the highest point in every section of the community.

The only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man.

We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!

The 100% American is 99% idiot.

If any religion had a chance of ruling over England, nay Europe within the next hundred years, it could be Islam.

A love affair should always be a honeymoon. And the only way to make sure of that is to keep changing the man; for the same man can never keep it up.

The whole strength of England lies in the fact that the enormous majority of the English people are snobs.

The most sublime courage I have ever witnessed has been among that class too poor to know they possessed it, and too humble for the world to discover it.

My specialty is being right when other people are wrong.

If more than 10% of the people like a painting, you can be sure it's bad.

I feel nothing but the accursed happiness I have dreaded all my life long: the happiness that comes as life goes, the happiness of yielding and dreaming instead of resisting and doing, the sweetness of the fruit that is going rotten.

Every step of progress means a duty repudiated, and a scripture torn up.

You accepted Allah or you had your throat cut by someone who did accept him, and who went to Paradise for having sent you to Hell.

There is at bottom only one genuinely scientific treatment for all diseases, and that is to stimulate the phagocytes.

Taxes are the chief business of a conqueror of the world.

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

The theory that music has a depraving effect on morals has now been abandoned to the old women of both sexes.

The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not a man of honor.

Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced by the inferior.

Absolute honesty is as absurd an abstraction as an absolute temperature or an absolute value.

Nothing can save us from a perpetual headlong fall into a bottomless abyss but a solid footing of dogma; and we no sooner agree to that than we find that the only trustworthy dogma is that there is no dogma.

The technical history of modern harmony is a history of growth of toleration by the human ear of chords that at first sounded discordant and senseless to the main body of contemporary professional musicians.

Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.

A socialist is somebody who doesn't have anything, and is ready to divide it up equally among everybody.

Whenever an obviously well founded statement is made in England by a person specially well acquainted with the facts, that unlucky person is instantly and frantically contradicted by all the people who obviously know nothing about it.

Once the divinity we worshipped made itself visible and comprehensible, we crucified it.

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.

All progress depends upon the unreasonable person.

BRITANNUS (shocked).
Caesar: this is not proper.
THEODOTUS (outraged).
How!
CAESAR (recovering his self-possession).
Pardon him. Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.

Being hurt by someone you truly care about leaves a hole in you heart that only love can fill.

We live in an atmosphere of shame. 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.

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.

What I say today everybody will say tomorrow, though they will not remember who put it into their heads. Indeed they will be right for I never remember who puts things into my head : it is the Zeitgeist.

If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentleman, he may pronounce as he pleases.

It is nearly 50 years since I was assured by a conclave of doctors that if I did not eat meat I should die of starvation.

Anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you.

When the horrors of anarchy force us to set up laws that forbid us to fight and torture one another for sport, we still snatch at every excuse for declaring individuals outside the protection of law and torturing them to our hearts content.

Once there was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time is called the Dark Ages. He who can, does. He who cannot teaches.

The person who is ignorant enough to believe that his nourishment depends on meat is in a horrible dilemma.

All great Truth first starts as Blasphemy.

Make me a beautiful word for doing things tomorrow; for that surely is a great and blessed invention.

When it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones.

Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned. May not one lost soul be permitted to abstain?

A mind of the caliber of mine cannot derive its nutrient from cows.

Woman reduces us all to the common denominator.

I don't. I look my age; and I am my age. It is the other people who look older than they are. What can you expect from people who eat corpses and drink spirits?

When an apparent miracle happened.it proved divine mission to the credulous, and proved a contract with the devil to the skeptical.

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say I know instead of I am learning, and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity.

I believe in Michelangelo, Velasquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by Beauty everlasting, and the message of Art that has made these hands blessed. Amen. Amen.

The criminal law is no use to decent people.

I never climbed any ladder: I have achieved eminence by sheer gravitation.

Idiots are always in favour of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favour of equality.

Go anywhere in England where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and really nice English people; and what do you always find? That the stables are the real centre of the household.

I hate the poor and look forward eagerly to their extermination.

Financiers live in a world of illusion. They count on something which they call the capital of the country, which has no existence.

Like fingerprints, all marriages are different.

The British are apt to make merits of their stupidities, and to represent their various incapacities as points of good breeding.