George Bernard Shaw: Trending quotes

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George Bernard Shaw: 826 quotes39 likes

“Women are not angels. They are as foolish as men in many ways; but they have had to devote themselves to life whilst men have had to devote themselves to death; and that makes a vital difference in male and female religion. Women have been forced to fear whilst men have been forced to dare: the heroism of a woman is to nurse and protect life, and of a man to destroy it and court death.”

George Bernard Shaw book The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism

The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, Chapter 82 http://books.google.com/books?id=ys13gZliXFAC (1928) <br class="br">1920s

“I was a cannibal for twenty-five years. For the rest I have been a vegetarian. It was Shelley who first opened my eyes to the savagery of my diet.”

George Bernard Shaw

Interview "Who I Am, and What I Think", in Frank Harris's periodical The Candid Friend (May 1901), reprinted in Sixteen Self Sketches, 1949, p. 53; quoted in Desmond King-Hele, Shelley: His Thought and Work, 1984, p. 42 https://books.google.it/books?id=V5KvCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA42 <br class="br">1900s

“The novelties of one generation are only the resuscitated fashions of the generation before last.”

George Bernard Shaw Three Plays for Puritans

Three Plays for Puritans, Preface (1900)
1900s

“There have been summits of civilization at which heretics like Socrates, who was killed because he was wiser than his neighbors, have not been tortured, but ordered to kill themselves in the most painless manner known to their judges. But from that summit there was a speedy relapse into our present savagery.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface; Cruelty's Excuses
1930s, On the Rocks (1933)

“The reformer for whom the world is not good enough finds himself shoulder to shoulder with him that is not good enough for the world.”

George Bernard Shaw

#158
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“He who desires a lifetime of happiness with a beautiful woman desires to enjoy the taste of wine by keeping his mouth always full of it.”

George Bernard Shaw

#105
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“You are so careful of your boy's morals, knowing how troublesome they may be, that you keep him away from the Venus of Milo only to find him in the arms of the scullery maid or someone much worse. You decide that the Hermes of Praxiteles and Wagner's Tristan are not suited for young girls; and your daughter marries somebody appallingly unlike either Hermes or Tristan solely to escape from your parental protection. You have not stifled a single passion nor averted a single danger: you have depraved the passions by starving them, and broken down all the defences which so effectively protect children brought up in freedom.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

“We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners.”

George Bernard Shaw You Never Can Tell

You Never Can Tell, Act I (1898)
1890s

“It is not necessary to replace a guillotined criminal: it is necessary to replace a guillotined social system.”

George Bernard Shaw

#65
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“Life must not cease. That comes before everything. It is silly to say you do not care. You do care. It is that care that will prompt your imagination; inflame your desires; make your will irresistible; and create out of nothing.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

“All very fine, Mary; but my old-fashioned common sense is better than your clever modern nonsense.”

George Bernard Shaw

1900s, Love Among the Artists (1900)

“Society, with all its prisons and bayonets and whips and ostracisms and starvations, is powerless in the face of the Anarchist who is prepared to sacrifice his own life in the battle with it. Our natural safety from the cheap and devastating explosives which every Russian student can make … lies in the fact that brave and resolute men, when they are rascals, will not risk their skins for the good of humanity, and, when they are sympathetic enough to care for humanity, abhor murder, and never commit it until their consciences are outraged beyond endurance. The remedy is, then, simply not to outrage their consciences.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

“All government is cruel; for nothing is so cruel as impunity.”

George Bernard Shaw

Pilate, as portrayed in Preface, Difference Between Reader And Spectator
1930s, On the Rocks (1933)

“You can feel nothing but a torment, and believe nothing but a lie. You will not raise your head to look at all the miracles of life that surround you; but you will run ten miles to see a fight or a death.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

“Do not mistake your objection to defeat for an objection to fighting, your objection to being a slave for an objection to slavery, your objection to not being as rich as your neighbor for an objection to poverty. The cowardly, the insubordinate, and the envious share your objections.”

George Bernard Shaw

#162
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“Nothing is more dreadful than a husband who keeps telling you everything he thinks, and always wants to know what you think.”

George Bernard Shaw

The Bishop
1900s, Getting Married (1908)

“Love is an appetite which, like all other appetites, is destroyed for the moment by its gratification.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1900s, Getting Married (1908)

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

“Hail, Sphinx: salutation from Julius Caesar! I have wandered in many lands, seeking the lost regions from which my birth into this world exiled me, and the company of creatures such as I myself. I have found flocks and pastures, men and cities, but no other Caesar, no air native to me, no man kindred to me, none who can do my day's deed, and think my night's thought.”

George Bernard Shaw

Act I
1890s, Caesar and Cleopatra (1898)

“Do not try to live for ever. You will not succeed.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1910s, The Doctor's Dilemma (1911)