George Bernard Shaw: Trending quotes (page 2)
George Bernard Shaw trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection“My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world.”
Act II
Source: 1900s, John Bull's Other Island (1907)
“You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.”
Act III
Source: 1900s, Major Barbara (1905)
Jesus, as portrayed in Preface, Difference Between Reader And Spectator
1930s, On the Rocks (1933)
Context: The kingdom of God is striving to come. The empire that looks back in terror shall give way to the kingdom that looks forward with hope. Terror drives men mad: hope and faith give them divine wisdom. The men whom you fill with fear will stick at no evil and perish in their sin: the men whom I fill with faith shall inherit the earth. I say to you Cast out fear. Speak no more vain things to me about the greatness of Rome. … You, standing for Rome, are the universal coward: I, standing for the kingdom of God, have braved everything, lost everything, and won an eternal crown.
“If you're going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh; otherwise they'll kill you.”
Credited to Shaw in the lead in to the mockumentary C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2004) and other recent works, but this or slight variants of it are also sometimes attributed to W. C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, and Oscar Wilde. It might possibly be derived from Shaw's statement in John Bull's Other Island (1907): "My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world."
Another possibility is that it is derived from Shaw's characteristic of Mark Twain: "He has to put things in such a way as to make people who would otherwise hang him believe he is joking."
Variants:
If you are going to tell people the truth, you'd better make them laugh. Otherwise, they'll kill you.
If you're going to tell people the truth, you'd better make them laugh. Otherwise, they'll kill you.
Disputed
“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
Everybody's Political What's What? (ebook, must be borrowed) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL24979564M/Everybody's_political_what's_what (1944), Chapter XXXVII: Creed and Conduct, p. 330
1940s and later
Variant: Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
Context: Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. Creeds, articles, and institutes of religious faith ossify our brains and make change impossible. As such they are nuisances, and in practice have to be mostly ignored.
“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”
Variant: If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
Source: Immaturity
“There is no love sincerer than the love of food.”
Source: 1900s, Man and Superman (1903), p. 23
Vivie, Act II
Source: 1890s, Mrs. Warren's Profession (1893)
Source: The Quintessence of Ibsenism
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
The attribution to Shaw comes from Leadership Skills for Managers (2000) by Marlene Caroselli, p. 71. But this quote seems more likely to come from William H. Whyte. The Biggest Problem in Communication Is the Illusion That It Has Taken Place, Quote Investigator, 2014-08-31, 2015-11-09 http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/08/31/illusion/,
Misattributed
“Success does not consist in never making blunders, but in never making the same one a second time.”
H. W. Shaw (Josh Billings), as quoted in Scientific American, Vol. 31 (1874), p. 121, and in dictionaries of quotations such as Excellent Quotations for Home and School (1890) by Julia B. Hoitt, p. 117 https://archive.org/stream/excellentquotat00hoitgoog/excellentquotat00hoitgoog#page/n138/mode/1up and Many Thoughts of Many Minds: A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age (1896) by Louis Klopsch, p. 266 https://archive.org/stream/manythoughtsman00klopgoog/manythoughtsman00klopgoog#page/n268/mode/1up.
Misattributed
The World (15 November 1893)
1890s
The She-Ancient, in Pt. V
Source: 1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)
Context: Art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul. But we who are older use neither glass mirrors nor works of art. We have a direct sense of life. When you gain that you will put aside your mirrors and statues, your toys and your dolls.
“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.”
Source: 1900s, Major Barbara (1905)