Quotes of the day- George Bernard Shaw:
George Bernard Shaw
(July 26, 1856 – November 2, 1950) was an Irish playwright and a
co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first
profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity
he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent
was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays. Nearly all his writings
address prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy which
makes their stark themes more palatable. Shaw examined education,
marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege. (Click
here for full article.)
A doctor's reputation is made by the number of eminent men who die under his care.
A drama critic is a man who leaves no turn unstoned.
A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful, than a life spent doing nothing.
A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
A pessimist thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.
Alcohol is a very necessary article... it enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
Although I cannot lay an egg, I am a very good judge of omelettes.
An Englishman is a creature who thinks he is being virtuous when he is only being uncomfortable.
Anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you.
As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.
Changeable women are more enduring than monotonous ones. They are sometimes murdered but seldom deserted.
Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it.
Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.
Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error.
Criminals do not die by the hands of the law; they die by the hands of other men.
Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity.
Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is poverty. What is matter with the rich is uselessness.
Do you know what a pessimist is? A person who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself and hates them for it.
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
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.
Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich, something for nothing.
Get married, but never to a man who is home all day.
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.
I don't know if there are men on the moon, but if there are, they must be using the earth as their lunatic asylum.
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.
I'm an atheist and I thank God for it.
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must man be of learning from experience.
If nations had any sense, they would begin a war by sending their oldest men to the trenches. They would not risk the lives of their young men except in the last extremity.
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton you might as well make it dance.
If you eliminate smoking and gambling, you will be amazed to find that almost all an Englishman's pleasures can be, and mostly are, shared by his dog.
In Heaven an angel is nobody in particular.
In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.
Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
It is most unwise for people in love to marry.
Lack of money is the root of all evil.
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful.
Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.
Morality is not respectability.
My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.
My specialty is being right when other people are wrong.
Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization.
No public man in these islands ever believes that the Bible means what it says: he is always convinced that it says what he means.
Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.
Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it.
Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.
Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
Rich men without convictions are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity.
Science is always wrong- it never solves a problem without creating ten more.
Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
Taste: a quality possessed by persons without originality or moral courage.
The Churches must learn humility as well as teach it.
The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity.
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
[The game of chess is] A foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time.
The greatest danger in communication is the illusion it has been achieved.
The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.
The more I see of the monied classes, the more I understand the guillotine.
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
The nation's morals are like its teeth, the more decayed they are the more it hurts to touch them.
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.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
The problem with communication is the assumption that it has been accomplished.
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.
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist.
The worst cliques are those which consist of one man.
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.
There are only two qualities in the world: efficiency and inefficiency, and only two sorts of people: the efficient and the inefficient.
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.
There is danger, destruction, torment- what more do we need to make us merry?
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
Two people getting together to write a book is like three people getting together to have a baby. One of them is superfluous.
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
We must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.
We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence... on pain of liquidation.
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.
You can not believe in honor until you have achieved it. Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.
You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.
You see things as they are and ask, “Why?” I dream things as they never were and ask, “Why not?”
You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
Your word can never be as good as your bond because your memory can never be as trustworthy as your honor.
Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.
Categories: George Bernard Shaw, Quotes of the day
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