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George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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413 Quotes Unveiling the Wit and Wisdom of a Brilliant Mind

Discover the brilliant wit and wisdom of George Bernard Shaw with our collection of his most famous quotes. From life lessons to societal critiques, Shaw's words will entertain and inspire. Explore his thoughts on happiness, knowledge, friendship, and more, and prepare to see the world through a new lens.

George Bernard Shaw, also known as Bernard Shaw, was an influential Irish playwright, critic, polemicist, and political activist. He wrote over sixty plays, including notable works like "Man and Superman," "Pygmalion," and "Saint Joan." As the leading dramatist of his generation, Shaw's range incorporated contemporary satire and historical allegory. In recognition of his contributions to literature, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925. Born in Dublin, Shaw moved to London in 1876, where he faced initial struggles but eventually established himself as a respected theatre and music critic. He joined the Fabian Society, becoming its prominent pamphleteer after experiencing a political awakening. Known for expressing controversial views on subjects such as eugenics and organised religion, Shaw continued writing prolifically until his death at the age of ninety-four.

Despite varying scholarly opinions about his works since his passing, George Bernard Shaw is consistently regarded as one of the greatest British dramatists second only to Shakespeare. His influence on Western theatre and culture extends from the 1880s through today. The word "Shavian" has entered the English language to encapsulate Shaw's ideas and unique means of expressing them.

✵ 26. July 1856 – 2. November 1950
George Bernard Shaw photo
George Bernard Shaw: 413   quotes 39   likes

George Bernard Shaw Quotes

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

George Bernard Shaw
Pain , Appearance

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

George Bernard Shaw Pygmalion

Source: Pygmalion

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

George Bernard Shaw Man and Superman

Source: Man and Superman

Music , Soul , Hell

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

George Bernard Shaw The Devil's Disciple

The Devil's Disciple, Act II
1900s

People , Way

“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.”

George Bernard Shaw

#16
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Problem , Universe

“A man's own self is the last person to believe in him, and is harder to cheat than the rest of the world.”

George Bernard Shaw

1900s, Love Among the Artists (1900)

World , Cheating , Personality

“No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.”

George Bernard Shaw

#41
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Sense

“You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living.”

George Bernard Shaw

The Irrational Knot, Preface (1905)
1900s

“I had not achieved a success; but I provoked an uproar; and the sensation was so agreeable that I resolved to try again.”

George Bernard Shaw

Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant, Vol. I, preface http://books.google.com/books?id=MiJaAAAAMAAJ&q=%22I+had+not+achieved+a+success+but+I+had+provoked+an+uproar+and+the+sensation+was+so+agreeable+that+I+resolved+to+try+again%22&pg=PR13#v=onepage (1898)
1890s

Success

“I am very subtle; but Man is deeper in his thought than I am. The woman knows that there is no such thing as nothing: the man knows that there is no such day as tomorrow. I do well to worship them.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

“The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1910s, Pygmalion (1912)

Children

“A critic recently described me, with deadly acuteness, as having 'a kindly dislike of my fellow-creatures.' Perhaps dread would have been nearer the mark than dislike; for man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.”

George Bernard Shaw

As quoted in George Bernard Shaw, his life and works: a critical biography (authorised), Archibald Henderson, Stewart & Kidd (1911), Chapter VII (The Art Critic), pp. 201-202
1910s

Animals

“The body was the slave of the vortex; but the slave has become the master; and we must free ourselves from that tyranny. It is this stuff [indicating her body], this flesh and blood and bone and all the rest of it, that is intolerable. Even prehistoric man dreamed of what he called an astral body, and asked who would deliver him from the body of this death.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

Death , Dreams

“Well, of course, they notice you. You always hide just in the middle of the limelight.”

George Bernard Shaw

Reply to T. E. Lawrence who complained of press attention.
Quoted by Harry Kessler in his diary, 14 November 1929 http://books.google.com/books?id=y_BJt918BHoC
1920s

“Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1900s, Getting Married (1908)

Life , Home , Understanding , Nature

“You in America should trust to that volcanic political instinct which I have divined in you.”

George Bernard Shaw

Speech at New York (11 April 1933)
1930s

“Every fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his credulity science or morality as confidently as his father called it divine revelation.”

George Bernard Shaw

#39
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Fools , Confidence , Teachers , Science

“If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself.”

George Bernard Shaw

#179
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Love , Hate

“God is on the side of the big battalions.”

George Bernard Shaw Saint Joan

Saint Joan : A Chronicle Play In Six Scenes And An Epilogue (1923)
1920s

God

“I don’t want to punish anybody, but there are an extraordinary number of people who I might want to kill…I think it would be a good thing to make everybody come before a properly appointed board just as he might come before the income tax commissioner and say every 5 years or every 7 years…just put them there and say, ‘Sir or madam will you be kind enough to justify your existence…if you’re not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little bit more then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive. Because your life does not benefit us and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.”

George Bernard Shaw

“George Bernard Shaw reopens capital punishment controversy”, Paramount British Pictures (March 5, 1931)
1930s

Life , People , Thinking

“I heard your prayers Thank God it's all over!”

George Bernard Shaw

Act IV
1910s, Pygmalion (1912)

God

“Under Socialism, you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you liked it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live, you would have to live well.”

George Bernard Shaw

The Intelligent Woman's Guide: To Socialism and Capitalism, New York: NY, Brentano (1928) p. 670.
1920s

Clothes

“Death is for many of us the gate of hell; but we are inside on the way out, not outside on the way in.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

Death , Way , Hell

“You see, lots of the real people can't do it at all: they're such fools that they think style comes by nature to people in their position; and so they never learn. There's always something professional about doing a thing superlatively well.”

George Bernard Shaw

1910s, Pygmalion (1912)

People , Fools , Nature , Thinking

“The public want actresses, because they think all actresses bad. They don't want music or poetry because they know that both are good. So actors and actresses thrive and poets and composers starve.”

George Bernard Shaw

1900s, Love Among the Artists (1900)

Music , Thinking

“Where equality is undisputed, so also is subordination.”

George Bernard Shaw

#28
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“The whole strength of England lies in the fact that the enormous majority of the English people are snobs.”

George Bernard Shaw

Hotchkiss
1900s, Getting Married (1908)

People

“Political necessities sometimes turn out to be political mistakes.”

George Bernard Shaw Saint Joan

Saint Joan : A Chronicle Play In Six Scenes And An Epilogue (1923) - Full text online http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200811h.html
1920s

“I ask you, what am I? I’m one of the undeserving poor: thats what I am. Think of what that means to a man.”

George Bernard Shaw

Act II
1910s, Pygmalion (1912)

Thinking

“The salvation of the world depends on the men who will not take evil good-humouredly, and whose laughter destroys the fool instead of encouraging him.”

George Bernard Shaw

What is the New Element in the Norwegian School?
1890s, Quintessence Of Ibsenism (1891; 1913)

Men , World , Fools , Laughter

“A healthy nation is as unconscious of its nationality as a healthy man of his bones. But if you break a nation's nationality it will think of nothing else but getting it set again.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1900s, John Bull's Other Island (1907)

Thinking

“Time enough to think of the future when you haven't any future to think of.”

George Bernard Shaw

1910s, Pygmalion (1912)

Thinking , Time , Future

“Geniuses are horrid, intolerant, easily offended, sleeplessly self-conscious men, who expect their wives to be angels with no further business in life than to pet and worship their husbands. Even at the best they are not comfortable men to live with; and a perfect husband is one who is perfectly comfortable to live with.”

George Bernard Shaw

1900s, Love Among the Artists (1900)

Life , Men , Angels , Business

“The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.”

George Bernard Shaw

Act IV
1890s, The Philanderer (1893)

“It is quite useless to declare that all men are born free if you deny that they are born good. Guarantee a man's goodness and his liberty will take care of itself. To guarantee his freedom on condition that you approve of his moral character is formally to abolish all freedom whatsoever, as every man's liberty is at the mercy of a moral indictment which any fool can trump up against everyone who violates custom, whether as a prophet or as a rascal.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

Men , Fools , Freedom

“All professions are conspiracies against the laity.”

George Bernard Shaw

Act I
1910s, The Doctor's Dilemma (1911)

“Obedience simulates subordination as fear of the police simulates honesty.”

George Bernard Shaw

#88
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Fear

“Any sort of plain speaking is better than the nauseous sham good fellowship our democratic public men get up for shop use.”

George Bernard Shaw

Franklyn, in Pt. II : The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

Men

“To understand a saint, you must hear the devil's advocate; and the same is true of the artist.”

George Bernard Shaw

The Sanity of Art: An Exposure of the Current Nonsense about Artists being Degenerate (1908)
1900s

Understanding

“They have accepted the burden of eternal life. They have taken the agony from birth; and their life does not fail them even in the hour of their destruction.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

Life , Birth

“Howbeit, Paul succeeded in stealing the image of Christ crucified for the figure-head of his Salvationist vessel, with its Adam posing as the natural man, its doctrine of original sin, and its damnation avoidable only by faith in the sacrifice of the cross. In fact, no sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface, Paul
1910s, Androcles and the Lion (1913)

Faith , Nature , Christ

“Your father is a fool skin deep; but you are a fool to your very marrow.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

Fools

“Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.”

George Bernard Shaw

#89
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Courage

“Consistency is the enemy of enterprise, just as symmetry is the enemy of art.”

George Bernard Shaw

As quoted in Bernard Shaw : The Lure of Fantasy (1991) by Michael Holroyd
1940s and later

Art