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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 34   likes

George Bernard Shaw Quotes

“Why was I born with such contemporaries?”

George Bernard Shaw The Dark Lady of the Sonnets

The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, Preface (1910)
1910s

“Socialists must be in favor of an aristocratic form of government. We must have the best men for the job... In the dictator you must have a man who has not only the power to govern but the force of character to impose himself as dictator whether you like him or not.”

George Bernard Shaw

“Socialism urged to find dictator,” Berkeley Daily Gazette (Nov. 30, 1927)
1890s

Men

“I know I began as a passion and have ended as a habit, like all husbands.”

George Bernard Shaw The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles

The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles, Act 2 (1934)
1940s and later

Passion

“Undershaft: You have made for yourself something that you call a morality or a religion or what not. It doesn't fit the facts. Well, scrap it. Scrap it and get one that does fit. That is what is wrong with the world at present. It scraps its obsolete steam engines and dynamos; but it wont scrap its old prejudices and its old moralities and its old religions and its old political constitutions. Whats the result? In machinery it does very well; but in morals and religion and politics it is working at a loss that brings it nearer bankruptcy every year.”

George Bernard Shaw

1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

World , Religion , Loss

“Our natural dispositions may be good; but we have been badly brought up, and are full of anti-social personal ambitions and prejudices and snobberies. Had we not better teach our children to be better citizens than ourselves? We are not doing that at present. The Russians are.”

George Bernard Shaw The Apple Cart

That is my last word. Think over it.
The Apple Cart (1928) Preface
1920s

Children , Nature , Thinking , Personality

“I don't want to talk grammar, I want to talk like a lady.”

George Bernard Shaw

Act II
1910s, Pygmalion (1912)

“I am justified. For I chose wisdom and the knowledge of good and evil; and now there is no evil; and wisdom and good are one. It is enough.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

Wisdom , Knowledge , Evil

“The way to deal with worldly people is to frighten them by repeating their scandalous whisperings aloud.”

George Bernard Shaw

1900s, Love Among the Artists (1900)

People , Way

“My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.”

George Bernard Shaw

Answers to Nine Questions (September 1896), answers to nine questions submitted by Clarence Rook, who had interviewed him in 1895
1890s

“George Bernard Shaw is said to have told W. S. C.:
Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend—if you have one.
W. S. C. to G. B. S.:
Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the second—if there is one.”

George Bernard Shaw

Version given in Irrepressible Churchill: A Treasury of Winston Churchill’s Wit by Kay Halle, 1966
Apocryphal, from 1946. See discussion at Winston Churchill#Misattributed, and detailed discussion at “ Here are Two Tickets for the Opening of My Play. Bring a Friend—If You Have One http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/03/25/two-tickets-shaw/”, Garson O’Toole, Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/, (March 25, 2012)
Misattributed

“The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown.”

George Bernard Shaw

#149
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Game , Passion

“You cannot be a hero without being a coward.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface http://books.google.com/books?id=u4xiAAAAMAAJ&q=%22You+cannot+be+a+hero+without+being+a+coward%22&pg=PR13#v=onepage
1900s, John Bull's Other Island (1907)

“Scratch an Englishman and find a Protestant.”

George Bernard Shaw Saint Joan

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

“Perhaps woman's art is of woman's life a thing apart, 'tis man's whole existence; just as love is said to be the reverse — though it isn't.”

George Bernard Shaw

1900s, Love Among the Artists (1900)

Love , Life , Art

“We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

Soul

“I worship you, Eve. I must have something to worship. Something quite different to myself, like you. There must be something greater than the snake.”

George Bernard Shaw

The Serpent, in Pt I : In the Beginning
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

“Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.”

George Bernard Shaw

#160
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Youth , Age , Forgiveness

“The worst cliques are those which consist of one man.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

“Beware of the man whose god is in the skies.”

George Bernard Shaw

#83
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

God

“I like a bit of a mongrel myself, whether it's a man or a dog; they're the best for every day.”

George Bernard Shaw

Episode I
1910s, Misalliance (1910)

Dogs

“Therefore my tax-payer, resign yourself to this: that we may fight bravely, fight hard, fight long, fight cunningly, fight recklessly, fight in a hundred and fifty ways, but we cannot fight cheaply.”

George Bernard Shaw

The Daily Chronicle on the 7 March 1917 https://www.rte.ie/centuryireland/index.php/articles/george-bernard-shaw-joyriding-on-the-front.
1910s, The Technique of War (1917)

Way , Fight

“THE HE-ANCIENT: When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth
STREPHON: Yes; and take all the fun out of it.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

Search

“If you leave your art, the world will beat you back to it. The world has not an ambition worth sharing, or a prize worth handling. Corrupt successes, disgraceful failures, or sheeplike vegetation are all it has to offer. I prefer Art, which gives me a sixth sense of beauty, with self-respect: perhaps also an immortal reputation in return for honest endeavour in a labour of love.”

George Bernard Shaw

1900s, Love Among the Artists (1900)

Love , World , Beauty , Art

“My way hither was the way of destiny; for I am he of whose genius you are the symbol: part brute, part woman, and part God — nothing of man in me at all. Have I read your riddle, Sphinx?”

George Bernard Shaw

Act I
1890s, Caesar and Cleopatra (1898)

God , Way , Reading , Parting

“It's well to be off with the Old Woman before you're on with the New.”

George Bernard Shaw

Act II
1890s, The Philanderer (1893)

“The more a man possesses over and above what he uses, the more careworn he becomes.”

George Bernard Shaw

#108
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“When will we realize that the fact that we can become accustomed to anything, however disgusting at first, makes it necessary to examine carefully everything we have become accustomed to.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

“You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well hammered yourself.”

George Bernard Shaw

Mrs. George
1900s, Getting Married (1908)

World , Learning

“Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her.”

George Bernard Shaw

#125
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Strong

“Journalists are too poorly paid in this country to know anything that is fit for publication.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1900s, Getting Married (1908)

Country

“Revolutionary movements attract those who are not good enough for established institutions as well as those who are too good for them.”

George Bernard Shaw

1910s, Androcles and the Lion (1913)

“A: Would you sleep with me for $1,000,000?”

George Bernard Shaw

Misattributed

Sleep

“The first prison I ever saw had inscribed on it CEASE TO DO EVIL: LEARN TO DO WELL; but as the inscription was on the outside, the prisoners could not read it.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface to English Prisons Under Local Government http://books.google.com/books?id=81YwAAAAYAAJ by Sydney and Beatrice Webb (1922)
1940s and later

Learning , Evil , Reading

“The quality of a play is the quality of its ideas.”

George Bernard Shaw

"The Play of Ideas", New Statesman (6 May 1950)
1940s and later

Idea

“He who confuses political liberty with freedom and political equality with similarity has never thought for five minutes about either.”

George Bernard Shaw

#23
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Freedom

“Monogamy has a sentimental basis which is quite distinct from the political one of equal numbers of the sexes. Equal numbers in the sexes are quite compatible with a change of partners every day or every hour. Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and calves, and that men and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock. Accordingly, the people whose conception of marriage is a farm-yard or slave-quarter conception are always more or less in a panic lest the slightest relaxation of the marriage laws should utterly demoralize society; whilst those to whom marriage is a matter of more highly evolved sentiments and needs (sometimes said to be distinctively human, though birds and animals in a state of freedom evince them quite as touchingly as we) are much more liberal, knowing as they do that monogamy will take care of itself provided the parties are free enough, and that promiscuity is a product of slavery and not of liberty.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface: "The Personal Sentimental Basis of Monogamy" http://www.enotalone.com/article/13714.html
1900s, Getting Married (1908)

Women , Men , Marriage , Children

“Riches and Art are spurious receipts for the production of Happiness and Beauty.”

George Bernard Shaw

#104
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Beauty , Art , Happiness

“As a red hot Communist I am in favour of fascism. The only drawback to Sir Oswald’s movement is that it is not quite British enough.”

George Bernard Shaw

As quoted in Socialism and Superior Brains: The Political Thought of Bernard Shaw by Gareth Griffith (1993). Originally from Bernard Shaw, The News Chronicle, “The Blackshirt Challenge,” (Jan. 1934)
1930s

“The road to ignorance is paved with good editions. Only the illiterate can afford to buy good books now.”

George Bernard Shaw

As quoted in Days with Bernard Shaw (1949) by Stephen Winsten
1940s and later

Books

“Economy is the art of making the most of life. The love of economy is the root of all virtue.”

George Bernard Shaw

Source: 1900s, Man and Superman (1903), p. 235

Love , Life , Art

“In a stupid nation the man of genius becomes a god: everybody worships him and nobody does his will.”

George Bernard Shaw

#101
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

God , Stupidity

“I hold the Prophet of Arabia in great esteem and I can quite understand that it would have been impossible to restrain and wean that illiterate and perverse race, sunk in the miasma of utter moral depravity, from committing the most heinous of crimes, and imbue its people with enthusiasm to strive after righteousness and assimilate high morals and virtues, without projecting such a terrible and intensely awe inspiring spectacle of Hell and an equally captivating and enticing image of a land flowing with milk and honey to represent Heaven before their vision.”

George Bernard Shaw

Interview (April 1935) in The Genuine Islam, Vol. 1, No. 8 (1936), as quoted at "A Shavian and a Theologian" at World Islamic Mission http://www.wimnet.org/articles/shaviantheo.htm
Disputed

People , Hell , Understanding

“In my view, Anglo-Irish history is for Englishmen to remember, for Irishmen to forget.”

George Bernard Shaw

Ireland in the New Century (1904) by Horace Plunkett
Often quoted as: Irish history is something no Englishman should forget and no Irishman should remember.
Misattributed

History , Forgetting

“We have no reason to suppose that we are the Creator's last word.”

George Bernard Shaw

Everybody's Political What's What http://books.google.com/books?id=JSwBAAAAMAAJ&q=%22we+have+no+reason+to+suppose+that+we+are+the+Creator's+last+word%22&pg=PA234#v=onepage (1944)
1940s and later

“Even the youngest of us may be wrong sometimes.”

George Bernard Shaw

1900s, Love Among the Artists (1900)

“All progress means war with Society.”

George Bernard Shaw

The Bishop
1900s, Getting Married (1908)

War

“An American has no sense of privacy. He does not know what it means. There is no such thing in the country.”

George Bernard Shaw

Speech at New York (11 April 1933)
1930s

Sense , Country

“He ain't a copper just look at 'is boots!”

George Bernard Shaw

Act I
1910s, Pygmalion (1912)

“Plato long ago pointed out the importance of being governed by men with sufficient sense of responsibility and comprehension of public duties to be very reluctant to undertake the work of governing.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1900s, Getting Married (1908)

Men , Sense