George Bernard Shaw: Trending quotes

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George Bernard Shaw: 826 quotes39 likes

“Monogamy has a sentimental basis which is quite distinct from the political one of equal numbers of the sexes. Equal numbers in the sexes are quite compatible with a change of partners every day or every hour. Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and calves, and that men and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock. Accordingly, the people whose conception of marriage is a farm-yard or slave-quarter conception are always more or less in a panic lest the slightest relaxation of the marriage laws should utterly demoralize society; whilst those to whom marriage is a matter of more highly evolved sentiments and needs (sometimes said to be distinctively human, though birds and animals in a state of freedom evince them quite as touchingly as we) are much more liberal, knowing as they do that monogamy will take care of itself provided the parties are free enough, and that promiscuity is a product of slavery and not of liberty.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface: "The Personal Sentimental Basis of Monogamy" http://www.enotalone.com/article/13714.html <br class="br">1900s, Getting Married (1908)

“Riches and Art are spurious receipts for the production of Happiness and Beauty.”

George Bernard Shaw

#104
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“As a red hot Communist I am in favour of fascism. The only drawback to Sir Oswald’s movement is that it is not quite British enough.”

George Bernard Shaw

As quoted in Socialism and Superior Brains: The Political Thought of Bernard Shaw by Gareth Griffith (1993). Originally from Bernard Shaw, The News Chronicle, “The Blackshirt Challenge,” (Jan. 1934)
1930s

“The road to ignorance is paved with good editions. Only the illiterate can afford to buy good books now.”

George Bernard Shaw

As quoted in Days with Bernard Shaw (1949) by Stephen Winsten
1940s and later

“Economy is the art of making the most of life. The love of economy is the root of all virtue.”

George Bernard Shaw

Source: 1900s, Man and Superman (1903), p. 235

“In a stupid nation the man of genius becomes a god: everybody worships him and nobody does his will.”

George Bernard Shaw

#101
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“I hold the Prophet of Arabia in great esteem and I can quite understand that it would have been impossible to restrain and wean that illiterate and perverse race, sunk in the miasma of utter moral depravity, from committing the most heinous of crimes, and imbue its people with enthusiasm to strive after righteousness and assimilate high morals and virtues, without projecting such a terrible and intensely awe inspiring spectacle of Hell and an equally captivating and enticing image of a land flowing with milk and honey to represent Heaven before their vision.”

George Bernard Shaw

Interview (April 1935) in The Genuine Islam, Vol. 1, No. 8 (1936), as quoted at "A Shavian and a Theologian" at World Islamic Mission http://www.wimnet.org/articles/shaviantheo.htm <br class="br">Disputed

“In my view, Anglo-Irish history is for Englishmen to remember, for Irishmen to forget.”

George Bernard Shaw

Ireland in the New Century (1904) by Horace Plunkett
Often quoted as: Irish history is something no Englishman should forget and no Irishman should remember.
Misattributed

“We have no reason to suppose that we are the Creator's last word.”

George Bernard Shaw

Everybody's Political What's What http://books.google.com/books?id=JSwBAAAAMAAJ&q=%22we+have+no+reason+to+suppose+that+we+are+the+Creator's+last+word%22&pg=PA234#v=onepage (1944) <br class="br">1940s and later

“Even the youngest of us may be wrong sometimes.”

George Bernard Shaw

1900s, Love Among the Artists (1900)

“All progress means war with Society.”

George Bernard Shaw

The Bishop
1900s, Getting Married (1908)

“An American has no sense of privacy. He does not know what it means. There is no such thing in the country.”

George Bernard Shaw

Speech at New York (11 April 1933)
1930s

“He ain't a copper just look at 'is boots!”

George Bernard Shaw

Act I
1910s, Pygmalion (1912)