George Bernard Shaw: Trending quotes

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George Bernard Shaw: 826 quotes39 likes

“When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.”

George Bernard Shaw

Ellie Dunn, Act II
1910s, Heartbreak House (1919)

“Those who understand evil pardon it.”

George Bernard Shaw

#167
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“When the master has come to do everything through the slave, the slave becomes his master, since he cannot live without him.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

“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.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

“The word morality, if we met it in the Bible, would surprise us as much as the word telephone or motor car.”

George Bernard Shaw Fanny's First Play

Fanny's First Play, Preface (1911)
1910s

“You're not a man, you're a machine.”

George Bernard Shaw Arms and the Man

Arms and the Man, Act III (1898)
1890s

“I exclude the hypothesis of complete originality on [Charles] Lever's part, because a man can no more be completely original in that sense than a tree can grow out of air.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

“Vulgarity is a necessary part of a complete author's equipment; and the clown is sometimes the best part of the circus.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface to London music in 1888-89 as heard by Corno di Bassetto http://books.google.com/books?id=3PBP0ln1gLgC (1937) <br class="br">1940s and later

“Some of the things Mussolini has done, and some that he is threatening to do go further in the direction of Socialism than the English Labour Party could yet venture if they were in power.”

George Bernard Shaw

Letter from G. Bernard Shaw to a friend, “Bernard Shaw's Defence of Mussolini,” (Feb, 7, 1927)
1920s

“I know Miss Warren is a great devotee of the Gospel of Getting On.”

George Bernard Shaw

Praed, Act IV
1890s, Mrs. Warren's Profession (1893)

“It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1910s, Pygmalion (1912)

“It is more dangerous to be a great prophet or poet than to promote twenty companies for swindling simple folk out of their savings.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1910s, Misalliance (1910)

“There are some men who are considered quite ugly, but who are more remarkable than pretty people. You often see that in artists.”

George Bernard Shaw

1900s, Love Among the Artists (1900)

“Composers are not human; They can live on diminished sevenths, and be contented with a pianoforte for a wife, and a string quartet for a family.”

George Bernard Shaw

1900s, Love Among the Artists (1900)

“Optimistic lies have such immense therapeutic value that a doctor who cannot tell them convincingly has mistaken his profession.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1910s, Misalliance (1910)

“If parents would only realize how they bore their children!”

George Bernard Shaw

Episode I
1910s, Misalliance (1910)

“Conceive. That is the word that means both the beginning in imagination and the end in creation.”

George Bernard Shaw

The Serpent, in Pt. I, Act I
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

“The Italians must allow us to slaughter the Momands, because, if we do not kill the warlike hillmen, they will kill us. And we must allow the Italians to slaughter the Danakils for the same reason.”

George Bernard Shaw

Quote about Italy’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia in Socialism and Superior Brains: The Political Thought of Bernard Shaw by Gareth Griffith (1993) p. 267.
1920s

“Well, I tell you again to get rid of your Constitution. But I suppose you won't do it. You have a good president and you have a bad Constitution, and the bad Constitution gets the better of the good President all the time. The end of it will be is that you might as well have an English Prime Minister.”

George Bernard Shaw

Newsreel interview by George Bernard Shaw entitled “Various Scenes with George Bernard Shaw,” Fox Movietone Newsreel (1931), referring to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency
1910s

“The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the parent's first duty.”

George Bernard Shaw

#33
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)