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“The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1910s, Pygmalion (1912)

“A critic recently described me, with deadly acuteness, as having 'a kindly dislike of my fellow-creatures.' Perhaps dread would have been nearer the mark than dislike; for man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.”

George Bernard Shaw

As quoted in George Bernard Shaw, his life and works: a critical biography (authorised), Archibald Henderson, Stewart & Kidd (1911), Chapter VII (The Art Critic), pp. 201-202
1910s

“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.”

George Bernard Shaw

The She-Ancient, in Pt. V
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

“Well, of course, they notice you. You always hide just in the middle of the limelight.”

George Bernard Shaw

Reply to T. E. Lawrence who complained of press attention. <br class="br">Quoted by Harry Kessler in his diary, 14 November 1929 http://books.google.com/books?id=y_BJt918BHoC <br class="br">1920s

“Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1900s, Getting Married (1908)

“You in America should trust to that volcanic political instinct which I have divined in you.”

George Bernard Shaw

Speech at New York (11 April 1933)
1930s

“Every fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his credulity science or morality as confidently as his father called it divine revelation.”

George Bernard Shaw

#39
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself.”

George Bernard Shaw

#179
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“God is on the side of the big battalions.”

George Bernard Shaw Saint Joan

Saint Joan : A Chronicle Play In Six Scenes And An Epilogue (1923)
1920s

“I don’t want to punish anybody, but there are an extraordinary number of people who I might want to kill…I think it would be a good thing to make everybody come before a properly appointed board just as he might come before the income tax commissioner and say every 5 years or every 7 years…just put them there and say, ‘Sir or madam will you be kind enough to justify your existence…if you’re not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little bit more then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive. Because your life does not benefit us and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.”

George Bernard Shaw

“George Bernard Shaw reopens capital punishment controversy”, Paramount British Pictures (March 5, 1931)
1930s

“I heard your prayers Thank God it's all over!”

George Bernard Shaw

Act IV
1910s, Pygmalion (1912)

“Under Socialism, you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you liked it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live, you would have to live well.”

George Bernard Shaw

The Intelligent Woman's Guide: To Socialism and Capitalism, New York: NY, Brentano (1928) p. 670.
1920s

“Death is for many of us the gate of hell; but we are inside on the way out, not outside on the way in.”

George Bernard Shaw

1910s, A Treatise on Parents and Children (1910)

“You see, lots of the real people can't do it at all: they're such fools that they think style comes by nature to people in their position; and so they never learn. There's always something professional about doing a thing superlatively well.”

George Bernard Shaw

1910s, Pygmalion (1912)

“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.”

George Bernard Shaw

1900s, Love Among the Artists (1900)

“Where equality is undisputed, so also is subordination.”

George Bernard Shaw

#28
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

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

George Bernard Shaw

Hotchkiss
1900s, Getting Married (1908)

“Political necessities sometimes turn out to be political mistakes.”

George Bernard Shaw Saint Joan

Saint Joan : A Chronicle Play In Six Scenes And An Epilogue (1923) - Full text online http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200811h.html <br class="br">1920s

“I ask you, what am I? I’m one of the undeserving poor: thats what I am. Think of what that means to a man.”

George Bernard Shaw

Act II
1910s, Pygmalion (1912)

“The salvation of the world depends on the men who will not take evil good-humouredly, and whose laughter destroys the fool instead of encouraging him.”

George Bernard Shaw

What is the New Element in the Norwegian School?
1890s, Quintessence Of Ibsenism (1891; 1913)