“Rebecca [West] can handle a pen as brilliantly as ever I could and much more savagely.”
“The British churchgoer prefers a severe preacher because he thinks a few home truths will do his neighbors no harm.”
“The public want actresses, because they think all actresses bad. They don't want music or poetry because they know that both are good. So actors and actresses thrive and poets and composers starve.”
“The way to deal with worldly people is to frighten them by repeating their scandalous whisperings aloud.”
Source: Love Among The Artists (Autobiographical Novel): A Story With a Purpose
“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.”
Source: George Bernard Shaw: The Collected Plays (Illustrated): 60 plays including Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, The Apple Cart, Cymbeline, Androcles And The Lion, The Man Of Destiny, The Inca Of Perusalem and Macbeth Skit
“To endure the pain of living, we all drug ourselves more or less with gin, with literature, with superstitions, with romance, with idealism, political, sentimental, and moral, with every possible preparation of that universal hashish: imagination.”
“We must not stay as we are, doing always what was done last time; or we shall stick in the mud.”
Source: Back to Methuselah
“Without danger I cannot be great. That is how I pay for Abel's blood. Danger and fear follow my steps everywhere. Without them courage would have no sense. And it is courage, courage, courage that raises the blood of life to crimson splendor.”
Source: The Collected Plays of George Bernard Shaw (Illustrated): Including Renowned Titles like Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, The Inca Of Perusalem, Macbeth Skit, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion
“You have no right to say that I am not sincere. I have found a happiness in art that real life has never given me. I am intensely in earnest about art. There is is a magic and mystery in art that you know nothing of.”
Source: The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more
“It is in the hour of trial that a man finds his true profession.”
Source: The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more
“They tell me that So-and-So, who does not write prefaces, is no charlatan. Well, I am. I first caught the ear of the British public on a cart in Hyde Park, to the blaring of brass bands,and this . . . because . . . I am a natural-born mountebank.”
Source: Three Plays for Puritans
“The reasonable man will adjust to the demands of his environment. The unreasonable man expects his environment to adjust to his own needs. Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.”
“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.”
“My heart, my heart, be whole and free: Love is thine only enemy.”
Source: The Collected Plays of George Bernard Shaw (Illustrated): Including Renowned Titles like Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, The Inca Of Perusalem, Macbeth Skit, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion
“Every girl has a right to be loved.”
Source: The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more
“My way of joking is to tell the truth”
“You practically do not use semicolons at all. This is a symptom of mental defectiveness, probably induced by camp life.”
“Be as romantic as you please about love ... but you mustn't be romantic about money.”
Source: The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more
“The ability to make witty observations is commonly refered to as "cynism" by people who lack it.”
“When you read a biography remember that the truth is never fit for publication.”
“Hate is the revenge of a coward intimidated.”
“The practical question, then, is what to do with the children. Tolerate them at home we will not. Let them run loose in the streets we dare not until our streets become safe places for children, which, to our utter shame, they are not at present, though they can hardly be worse than some homes and some schools.”
Source: The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more
“An idea that no one believes can not be proved too often.”
“When a lion meets another with a louder roar, the first lion thinks the last a bore.”
Source: The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more
“The longer I live, the more convinced am I that this planet is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum.”
“The man who has never made a mistake will never make anything else.”
“Give me the artist who breathes it like a native, and goes about his work in it as quietly as a common man goes about his ordinary business. Mozart did so; and that is why I like him. Even if I did not, I should pretend to; for a taste in his music is a mark of caste among musicians, and should be worn, like a tall hat, by the amateur who wishes to pass for a true Brahmin.”
“Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. If all economists were laid end to end they would not reach a conclusion.”
“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.”
“For nearly twenty years I have been a published author... But I have never yet seen a book of mine offered for sale in a shop window.”
“Martyrdom is the only path to immortality that requires no talent whatsoever.”
“If you would stick to the concrete, and put your discoveries in the form of entertaining anecdotes about your adventures with women, your conversation would be easier to follow.”
Source: George Bernard Shaw: The Collected Plays (Illustrated): 60 plays including Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, The Apple Cart, Cymbeline, Androcles And The Lion, The Man Of Destiny, The Inca Of Perusalem and Macbeth Skit
“He who confuses political liberty with freedom and political equality with similarity has never thought for five minutes about either.”
Source: George Bernard Shaw: Collected Articles, Lectures, Essays and Letters: Thoughts and Studies from the Renowned Dramaturge and Author of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Pygmalion, Arms and The Man, Saint Joan, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion
“Deep knowledge is not knowledge of the thing itself, but knowledge of a thing like the thing. Then, you gain not one knowledge, but two knowledges. Of the thing. And of the original thing with is like the thing. Which is the barbarism of the privileged class.”
“Every man is a revolutionist concerning the thing he understands. For example, every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it, and consequently a revolutionist.”
Source: Nelly Sachs, Jean-Paul Sartre, George Bernard Shaw, Frans Eemil Sillanpää, René Sully-Prudhomme
“Sherlock Holmes was a drug addict without a single amiable trait.”
“Patriotism is a word which always commemorates a robbery.”
“Now that we have learned to fly the air like birds, swim under water like fish, we lack one thing - to learn to live on earth as human beings.”
“We are more gullible and superstitious today than we were in the Middle Ages, and an example of modern credulity is the widespread belief that the Earth is round. The average man can advance not a single reason for thinking that the Earth is round. He merely swallows this theory because there is something about it that appeals to the twentieth century mentality.”
“A serious illness or a death advertises the doctor exactly as a hanging advertises the barrister who defended the person hanged.”
“If I refuse to allow my leg to be amputated, its mortification and my death may prove that I was wrong; but if I let the leg go, nobody can ever prove that it would not have mortified had I been obstinate. Operation is therefore the safe side for the surgeon as well as the lucrative side.”
“Don't wait for the right opportunity: create it.”
“Ye poor posterity, think not that ye are the first. Other fools before ye have seen the sun rise and set, and the moon change her shape and her hour. As they were so ye are; and yet not so great; for the pyramids my people built stand to this day; whilst the dustheaps on which ye slave, and which ye call empires, scatter in the wind even as ye pile your dead sons' bodies on them to make yet more dust.”
Source: George Bernard Shaw: The Collected Plays (Illustrated): 60 plays including Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, The Apple Cart, Cymbeline, Androcles And The Lion, The Man Of Destiny, The Inca Of Perusalem and Macbeth Skit
“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.”
“Social progress takes effect through the replacement of all institutions by new ones; and since every institution involves the recognition of the duty of conforming to it, progress must involve the repudiation of an established duty at every step.”
Source: George Bernard Shaw: Collected Articles, Lectures, Essays and Letters: Thoughts and Studies from the Renowned Dramaturge and Author of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Pygmalion, Arms and The Man, Saint Joan, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion
“It is the first duty of every man not to be poor.”
“All roads end at the grave, which is the gate to nothingness.”
Source: The Adventures Of Black Girl in Her Search for God
“I really don't think I could consent to go to Heaven if I thought there were no animals there.”
Source: The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more
“All great Truth first starts as Blasphemy.”
“When your eyes are fixed in the stare of unconsciousness, and your throat coughs the last gasping breath - as one dragged in the dark to a great precipice - what assistance are a wife and child?”
