George Bernard Shaw: Trending quotes

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George Bernard Shaw: 826 quotes39 likes

“A healthy nation is as unconscious of its nationality as a healthy man of his bones. But if you break a nation's nationality it will think of nothing else but getting it set again.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1900s, John Bull's Other Island (1907)

“A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of Hell.”

George Bernard Shaw

1910s, Misalliance (1910)

“Geniuses are horrid, intolerant, easily offended, sleeplessly self-conscious men, who expect their wives to be angels with no further business in life than to pet and worship their husbands. Even at the best they are not comfortable men to live with; and a perfect husband is one who is perfectly comfortable to live with.”

George Bernard Shaw

1900s, Love Among the Artists (1900)

“The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.”

George Bernard Shaw

Act IV
1890s, The Philanderer (1893)

“It is quite useless to declare that all men are born free if you deny that they are born good. Guarantee a man's goodness and his liberty will take care of itself. To guarantee his freedom on condition that you approve of his moral character is formally to abolish all freedom whatsoever, as every man's liberty is at the mercy of a moral indictment which any fool can trump up against everyone who violates custom, whether as a prophet or as a rascal.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

“All professions are conspiracies against the laity.”

George Bernard Shaw

Act I
1910s, The Doctor's Dilemma (1911)

“Obedience simulates subordination as fear of the police simulates honesty.”

George Bernard Shaw

#88
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“Any sort of plain speaking is better than the nauseous sham good fellowship our democratic public men get up for shop use.”

George Bernard Shaw

Franklyn, in Pt. II : The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

“To understand a saint, you must hear the devil's advocate; and the same is true of the artist.”

George Bernard Shaw

The Sanity of Art: An Exposure of the Current Nonsense about Artists being Degenerate (1908)
1900s

“They have accepted the burden of eternal life. They have taken the agony from birth; and their life does not fail them even in the hour of their destruction.”

George Bernard Shaw

Lilith, in Pt. V
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

“Howbeit, Paul succeeded in stealing the image of Christ crucified for the figure-head of his Salvationist vessel, with its Adam posing as the natural man, its doctrine of original sin, and its damnation avoidable only by faith in the sacrifice of the cross. In fact, no sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface, Paul
1910s, Androcles and the Lion (1913)

“Your father is a fool skin deep; but you are a fool to your very marrow.”

George Bernard Shaw

Eve to Cain, in Pt. I, Act II
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

“Happiness and Beauty are by-products.”

George Bernard Shaw

#102
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.”

George Bernard Shaw

#89
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“Consistency is the enemy of enterprise, just as symmetry is the enemy of art.”

George Bernard Shaw

As quoted in Bernard Shaw : The Lure of Fantasy (1991) by Michael Holroyd
1940s and later

“Chloroform has done a lot of mischief. It's enabled every fool to be a surgeon.”

George Bernard Shaw

1910s, The Doctor's Dilemma (1911)

“The Bible is most dangerous book ever written on earth, keep it under lock and key.”

George Bernard Shaw

From Why You Should Never be a Christian (1987) by Ishaq 'Kunle Sanni and ‎Dawood Ayodele Amoo.
Misattributed

“Undershaft: My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.”

George Bernard Shaw

Act II
1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

“The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing.”

George Bernard Shaw

Leo
1900s, Getting Married (1908)