George Bernard Shaw: Doing

George Bernard Shaw was Irish playwright. Explore interesting quotes on doing.

George Bernard Shaw: 826 quotes39 likes

“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) <br class="br">1940s and later

“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 <br class="br">1900s, Getting Married (1908)

“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)

“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

“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

“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)

“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)

“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

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it well, ever loses his self-respect.”

George Bernard Shaw The Doctor's Dilemma

Preface http://books.google.com/books?id=aniaAAAAIAAJ&q=%22No+man+who+is+occupied+in+doing+a+very+difficult+thing+and+doing+it+very+well+ever+loses+his+self-respect%22&pg=PR22#v=onepage <br class="br">1910s, The Doctor's Dilemma (1911) <br class="br">Variant: No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.