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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

“Ah-ah-ah-ah-ow-ow-oo-oo!!! I ain't dirty: I washed me face and hands afore I come, I did!”

George Bernard Shaw

Act II
1910s, Pygmalion (1912)

“The Nazi movement is in many respects one which has my warmest sympathy.”

George Bernard Shaw

As Quoted in London Morning Post, (Dec. 3, 1925)
1920s

“Decency is Indecency’s Conspiracy of Silence.”

George Bernard Shaw

#126
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Silence

“God help England if she had no Scots to think for her!”

George Bernard Shaw The Apple Cart

The Apple Cart (1928), Act II
1920s

God , Thinking , Help

“Self-denial is not a virtue: it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.”

George Bernard Shaw

#87
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

Peace , Heart , Happiness

“Those who understand evil pardon it.”

George Bernard Shaw

#167
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Understanding , Evil

“When the master has come to do everything through the slave, the slave becomes his master, since he cannot live without him.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

“Even a vortex is a vortex in something. You can't have a whirlpool without water; and you can't have a vortex without gas, or molecules or atoms or ions or electrons or something, not nothing.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

Water

“The word morality, if we met it in the Bible, would surprise us as much as the word telephone or motor car.”

George Bernard Shaw Fanny's First Play

Fanny's First Play, Preface (1911)
1910s

Cars

“You're not a man, you're a machine.”

George Bernard Shaw Arms and the Man

Arms and the Man, Act III (1898)
1890s

“I exclude the hypothesis of complete originality on [Charles] Lever's part, because a man can no more be completely original in that sense than a tree can grow out of air.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

Sense , Tree , Parting

“Vulgarity is a necessary part of a complete author's equipment; and the clown is sometimes the best part of the circus.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface to London music in 1888-89 as heard by Corno di Bassetto http://books.google.com/books?id=3PBP0ln1gLgC (1937)
1940s and later

Parting

“Some of the things Mussolini has done, and some that he is threatening to do go further in the direction of Socialism than the English Labour Party could yet venture if they were in power.”

George Bernard Shaw

Letter from G. Bernard Shaw to a friend, “Bernard Shaw's Defence of Mussolini,” (Feb, 7, 1927)
1920s

“I know Miss Warren is a great devotee of the Gospel of Getting On.”

George Bernard Shaw

Praed, Act IV
1890s, Mrs. Warren's Profession (1893)

“It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1910s, Pygmalion (1912)

Hate

“It is more dangerous to be a great prophet or poet than to promote twenty companies for swindling simple folk out of their savings.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1910s, Misalliance (1910)

“There are some men who are considered quite ugly, but who are more remarkable than pretty people. You often see that in artists.”

George Bernard Shaw

1900s, Love Among the Artists (1900)

Men , People

“Composers are not human; They can live on diminished sevenths, and be contented with a pianoforte for a wife, and a string quartet for a family.”

George Bernard Shaw

1900s, Love Among the Artists (1900)

Family

“Optimistic lies have such immense therapeutic value that a doctor who cannot tell them convincingly has mistaken his profession.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1910s, Misalliance (1910)

“Conceive. That is the word that means both the beginning in imagination and the end in creation.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

Imagination

“The Italians must allow us to slaughter the Momands, because, if we do not kill the warlike hillmen, they will kill us. And we must allow the Italians to slaughter the Danakils for the same reason.”

George Bernard Shaw

Quote about Italy’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia in Socialism and Superior Brains: The Political Thought of Bernard Shaw by Gareth Griffith (1993) p. 267.
1920s

“Well, I tell you again to get rid of your Constitution. But I suppose you won't do it. You have a good president and you have a bad Constitution, and the bad Constitution gets the better of the good President all the time. The end of it will be is that you might as well have an English Prime Minister.”

George Bernard Shaw

Newsreel interview by George Bernard Shaw entitled “Various Scenes with George Bernard Shaw,” Fox Movietone Newsreel (1931), referring to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency
1910s

Time

“The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the parent's first duty.”

George Bernard Shaw

#33
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Children , Parent

“I don't believe in morality. I'm a disciple of Bernard Shaw.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

“The duke inquires contemptuously whether his gamekeeper is the equal of the Astronomer Royal; but he insists that they shall both be hanged equally if they murder him.”

George Bernard Shaw

#26
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“It is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to think otherwise than in the fashion of their own period.”

George Bernard Shaw Saint Joan

Preface http://books.google.com/books?id=T70Ahd88jSMC&q=%22It+is+difficult+if+not+impossible+for+most+people+to+think+otherwise+than+in+the+fashion+of+their+own+period%22&pg=PA46#v=onepage to Saint Joan: A Chronicle Play In Six Scenes And An Epilogue (1923)
1920s

People , Fashion , Thinking
George Bernard Shaw quote: “The secret of success is to offend the greatest number of people.”

“The secret of success is to offend the greatest number of people.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

People , Secret , Success

“The sex relation is not a personal relation. It can be irresistibly desired and rapturously consummated between persons who could not endure one another for a day in any other relation.”

George Bernard Shaw

letter, 24 June 1930, to Frank Harris "To Frank Harris on Sex in Biography" Sixteen Self Sketches (1949)
1940s and later

Sex , Personality

“Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another.”

George Bernard Shaw

Act II
1910s, Pygmalion (1912)

Life , Women

“I can wait: waiting and patience mean nothing to the eternal. I gave the woman the greatest of gifts: curiosity. By that her seed has been saved from my wrath; for I also am curious; and I have waited always to see what they will do tomorrow.”

George Bernard Shaw

Source: 1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

Waiting , Patience

“There are no perfectly honorable men; but every true man has one main point of honor and a few minor ones.”

George Bernard Shaw

#68
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Men

“Why should you call me to account for eating decently? If I battened on the scorched corpses of animals, you might well ask me why I did that. Why should I be filthy and inhuman? Why should I be an accomplice in the wholesale horror and degradation of the slaughter-house?”

George Bernard Shaw

Interview "What Vegetarianism Really Means: a Talk with Mr Bernard Shaw", in Vegetarian (15 January 1898), reprinted in Shaw: Interviews and Recollections, edited by A. M. Gibbs, 1990, p. 401 https://books.google.it/books?id=45muCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA401
1890s

Animals , Housing

“Cusins: Call you poverty a crime?
Undershaft: The worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues beside it: all the other dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing: a murder here and a theft there, a blow now and a curse then: what do they matter? they are only the accidents and illnesses of life: there are not fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed people. They poison us morally and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty.”

George Bernard Shaw

1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

Life , People , Fear , Fools

“Love is a simple thing and a deep thing: it is an act of life and not an illusion. Art is an illusion.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

Love , Life , Art

“Never forget that if you leave your law to judges and your religion to bishops, you will presently find yourself without either law or religion.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1900s, Getting Married (1908)

Religion , Law , Forgetting

“I'm only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler. I don't like beer.”

George Bernard Shaw book Candida

Candida, Act III
1890s

Beer

“The man who has graduated from the flogging block at Eton to the bench from which he sentences the garrotter to be flogged is the same social product as the garrotter who has been kicked by his father and cuffed by his mother until he has grown strong enough to throttle and rob the rich citizen whose money he desires.”

George Bernard Shaw

#55
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Money , Strong

“Shaw: Madam, would you sleep with me for a million pounds?
Actress: My goodness, Well, I'd certainly think about it
Shaw: Would you sleep with me for a pound?
Actress: Certainly not! What kind of woman do you think I am?!
Shaw: Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling over the price.”

George Bernard Shaw

Similar remarks are also attributed to Winston Churchill, Groucho Marx and to Mark Twain
Disputed

Thinking , Sleep

“When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1900s, Getting Married (1908)

Death , People , Passion , Parting

“The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.”

George Bernard Shaw

Act II
1890s, The Philanderer (1893)

Love , Women

“That proves it's not by Shaw, because all Shaw's characters are himself: mere puppets stuck up to spout Shaw.”

George Bernard Shaw Fanny's First Play

Fanny's First Play, Epilogue
1910s

“When a heretic wishes to avoid martyrdom he speaks of “Orthodoxy, True and False” and demonstrates that the True is his heresy.”

George Bernard Shaw

#172
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Falseness

“Again, there is the illusion of "increased command over Nature," meaning that cotton is cheap and that ten miles of country road on a bicycle have replaced four on foot. But even if man's increased command over Nature included any increased command over himself (the only sort of command relevant to his evolution into a higher being), the fact remains that it is only by running away from the increased command over Nature to country places where Nature is still in primitive command over Man that he can recover from the effects of the smoke, the stench, the foul air, the overcrowding, the racket, the ugliness, the dirt which the cheap cotton costs us.”

George Bernard Shaw

Notes
1890s, Caesar and Cleopatra (1898)

Nature , Country

“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)
1920s

Life , Death , Women , Men

“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
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

Fashion

“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)