“In the arts of peace Man is a bungler.”
“The criminal law is no use to decent people.”
“Somemenare bornkings; and someare bornstatesmen. The two are seldom the same.”
“The road to ignorance is paved with good editions. Only the illiterate can afford to buy good books now.”
“When a heretic wishes to avoid martyrdom he speaks of "Orthodoxy, True and False" and demonstrates that the True is his heresy.”
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
“You can feel nothing but a torment, and believe nothing but a lie. You will not raise your head to look at all the miracles of life that surround you; but you will run ten miles to see a fight or a death.”
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
“Even a vortex is a vortex in something. You can't have a whirlpool without water; and you can't have a vortex without gas, or molecules or atoms or ions or electrons or something, not nothing.”
“Don't ask me for promises until I know what I am promising.”
“If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a foot-rule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved.”
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
“No elaboration of physical or moral accomplishment can atone for the sin of parasitism.”
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
“If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself.”
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
“It is more dangerous to be a great prophet or poet than to promote twenty companies for swindling simple folk out of their savings.”
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
“Your father is a fool skin deep; but you are a fool to your very marrow.”
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 body was the slave of the vortex; but the slave has become the master; and we must free ourselves from that tyranny. It is this stuff [ indicating her body ], this flesh and blood and bone and all the rest of it, that is intolerable. Even prehistoric man dreamed of what he called an astral body, and asked who would deliver him from the body of this death.”
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 poor silly-clever Irishman takes off his hat to God's Englishman.”
“You cannot learn to skate without making yourself ridiculous - the ice of life is slippery.”
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
“Not everybody is strong enough to endure life without an anesthetic. Drink probably averts more gross crime than it causes.”
“Discussing vaccination with a doctor is like discussing vegetarianism with a butcher.”
“My mother married a very good man ... and she is not at all keen on my doing the same.”
Source: The Portable Bernard Shaw
“All progress is due to the unreasonable person.”
“You can rave about Stravinsky without the slightest risk of being classified as a lunatic by the next generation .”
“The price of ability does not depend on merit but on supply and demand.”
“Two people getting together to write a book is like three people getting together to have a baby. One of them is superfluous.”
“It would positively be a relief to me to dig Shakespeare up and throw stones at him.”
“I don't know what to say about this book. The experience on which it is founded is so extraordinary, that an honest record of it should be preserved . . . But it would have driven me mad; and I am not sure that the author came out of it without a slight derangement.”
“Every drunken skipper trusts to Providence. But one of the ways of Providence with drunken skippers is to run them on the rocks.”
Source: Heartbreak House
“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.”
“This planet is obviously being used as an insane asylum by other planets.”
“Hell is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.”
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
“I don't like the idea of killing my fellow creatures in order to eat their dead bodies.”
“That older and greater church to which I belong: the church where the oftener you laugh the better, because by laughter only can you destroy evil without malice”
“A woman whose face looked as if it had been made of sugar and someone had licked it.”
“Jesus remains unshaken as the practical man; and we stand exposed as the fools, the blunderers, the unpractical visionaries.”
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
“Indifference is the essence of inhumanity.”
“You can lose a man like that by your own death, but not by his.”
“My only policy is to profess evil and do good.”
“No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another.”
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
“Morality is not respectability.”
“From Mozart I learnt to say important things in a conversational way.”
“Woman's happiness begins with her first love and ends about then”
“People who are hard, grasping and always ready to take advantage of their neighbors become very rich.”
“A thing that nobody believes cannot be proved too often.”
Source: Plays Unpleasant
“Every child has a right to its own bent. . . . It has a right to find its own way and go its own way, whether that way seems wise or foolish to others, exactly as an adult has. It has a right to privacy as to its own doings and its own affairs as much as if it were its own father.”
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
“Nothing is more dangerous than a poor doctor: not even a poor employer or a poor landlord.”
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 family is a tyranny ruled over by it's weakest member.”
“History, sir, will tell lies as usual.”
“Make money and the whole nation will conspire to call you a gentleman.”
“Treat persons who profess to be able to cure disease as you treat fortune tellers.”
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
“All religions begin with a revolt against morality, and perish when morality conquers them.”
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
“Take the utmost care to get well born and well brought up.”
