George Bernard Shaw Quotes

page 4

413 Quotes Unveiling the Wit and Wisdom of a Brilliant Mind

“A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry.”

“There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.”

“The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.”

“Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.”

“But to admire a strong person
and to live under that strong person’s thumb are
two different things.”

“A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.”

“Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the difference between one young woman and another.”

“Life is not meant to be easy, my child but take courage: it can be delightful.”

“If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.”

“In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.”

“Whisky is liquid sunshine.”

“… a man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.”

“A man learns to skate by staggering about and making a fool of himself. Indeed he progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself.”

“The English are not a very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity.”

“She has mischievious moments when she wishes she could get him alone on a desert island…”

“Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity; and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.”

“The best way to get your point across is to entertain.”

“I hear you say "Why?" Always "Why?" You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"”

“A learned man is an idler who kills time by study.”

“Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience. If we could learn from mere experience, the stones of London would be wiser than its wisest men.”

“One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.”

“Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.”

“Don't think you can frighten me by telling me that I am alone. France is alone. God is alone. And the loneliness of God is His strength.”

“Assassination is the extreme form of censorship; and it seems hard to justify an incitement to it on anti-censorial principles.”

“I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly tell our children that honesty is the best policy.”

“I like flowers, I also like children, but I do not chop their heads off and keep them in bowls of water around the house.”

“Lack of money is the root of all evil.”

“HIGGINS. Have you no morals, man?
DOOLITTLE [unabashed] Cant afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me.”

“It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.”

“Science never solves a problem without creating ten more”

“What we want to see is the child in pursuit of the knowledge not the knowledge in pursuit of the child.”

“There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.”

“Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.”

“It is a woman's business to get married as soon as possible, and a man's
to keep unmarried as long as he can.”

“Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.”

“The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.”

“Most people go to their grave with their music inside them.”

“I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.”

“What is the matter with universities is that the students are school children, whereas it is of the very essence of university education that they should be adults.”

“He who has never hoped can never despair”

“Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making
trouble. There’s only one way of escaping trouble; and that’s killing things.”

“We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence… on pain of liquidation”

“Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion: his relation to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable.”

“Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned. May not one lost soul be permitted to abstain?”

“A happy familiy is but an earlier heaven.”

“Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.”

“What is life but a series of inspired follies…”

“I believe in the discipline of silence, and could talk for hours about it.”

“If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a foot-rule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved.”