“To withhold deserved praise lest it should make its object conceited is as dishonest as to withhold payment of a just debt lest your creditor should spend the money badly.”
“Reasonable men adapt themselves to their environment; unreasonable men try to adapt their environment to themselves. Thus all progress is the result of the efforts of unreasonable men.”
“We throw the whole drudgery of creation on one sex, and then imply that no female of any delicacy would initiate any effort in that direction.”
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
“A tranquil woman can go on sewing longer than an angry man can go on fuming.”
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
“Of the two lots, the woman's lot of perpetual motherhood, and the man's of perpetual babyhood, I prefer the man's.”
“Women have been a ghastly nuisance in my life.”
“Woman reduces us all to the common denominator.”
“It is assumed that the woman must wait, motionless, until she is wooed. That is how the spider waits for the fly.”
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 sometimes have to answer a woman according to her womanliness, just as you have to answer a fool according to his folly.”
“Changeable women are more endurable that monotonous ones; they are sometimes murdered but never deserted.”
“I learned more from the first stupid woman who fell in love with me than ever my brains taught me.”
“Female murderers get sheaves of offers of marriage.”
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 whole world is strewn with snares, traps, gins and pitfalls for the capture of men by women.”
Source: Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy
“A man has no business to marry a woman who can't make him miserable. It means she can't make him happy.”
“The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it.”
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
“The first prison I ever saw had inscribed on it CEASE TO DO EVIL: LEARN TO DO WELL; but as the inscription was on the outside, the prisoners could not read it.”
Source: The Complete Prefaces: 1914-1929
“We are all victims of the violence that animals suffer... their liberation is also our liberation.”
“The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves.”
“There is no accomplishment so easy to acquire as politeness and none more profitable.”
“From a very early age, I've had to interrupt my education to go to school.”
“Opera is when a tenor and soprano want to make love, but are prevented from doing so by a baritone.”
“I was a cannibal for twenty-five years. For the rest I have been a vegetarian.”
“Those who can’t change their minds can’t change anything.”
“Money enables us to get what we want instead of what other people think we want.”
“If a woman rebels against high-heeled shoes, she should take care to do it in a very smart hat”
“I'm sick of all the reasonable people: they see all the reasons for doing nothing”
“Democracy is a word all public men use and none understand.”
“Those who won't hesitate to vivisect, won't hesitate to lie about it as well.”
“We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.”
“It is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to think otherwise than in the fashion of their own period.”
Source: Saint Joan
“I do not want to make my stomach a graveyard of dead animals.”
“If at age 20 you are not a Communist then you have no heart. If at age 30 you are not a Capitalist then you have no brains.”
“Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.”
“The Anti-Vivisector does not deny that physiologists must make experiments and even take chances with new methods. He says that they must not seek knowledge by criminal methods, just as they must not make money by criminal methods. He does not object to Galileo dropping cannon balls from the top of the leaning tower of Pisa; but he would object to shoving off two dogs or American tourists.”
“The American Constitution, one of the few modern political documents drawn up by men who were forced by the sternest circumstances to think out what they really had to face, instead of chopping logic in a university classroom.”
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
“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.”
“Education can and should do much influence social, moral and intellectual discovery by stimulating critical attitudes of thought in the young”
“Our first duty, to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor.”
“The real moment of success is not the moment apparent to the crowd.”
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
“The harder I work the more I live.”
“It's just as unpleasant to get more than you bargain for as to get less.”
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
“The wheels are turning, but the hamsters are all dead. Make it idiot-proof and someone will make a better idiot. I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig, you get dirty; and besides, the pig likes it.”
“All this struggling and striving to make the world better is a great mistake. Not that it's wrong to try to improve the world if you know how but simply because struggling and striving are the worst possible ways to go about doing anything!”
“Start with the belief that your life can indeed be changed, and that you have the power to change it.”
“We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!”
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
“Words are only postage stamps delivering the object for you to unwrap”
“Ireland, sir, for good or evil, is like no other place under heaven, and no man can touch its sod or breathe its air without becoming better or worse.”
Source: John Bull's Other Island
“Imprisonment is as irrevocable as death.”
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
“Of the three official objects of our prison system: vengeance, deterrence, and reformation of the criminal, only one is achieved; and that is the one which is nakedly abominable.”
“While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.”
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
