George Bernard Shaw: Making (page 2)

George Bernard Shaw was Irish playwright. Explore interesting quotes on making.
George Bernard Shaw: 826   quotes 39   likes

“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.”

George Bernard Shaw

Source: Advice to a Young Critic

Fools , Learning

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

George Bernard Shaw

"Rungs of the Ladder" http://books.google.com/books?id=HLpRc3rm5b8C, BBC Radio broadcast, 11 July 1932
1930s

Children , World

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

George Bernard Shaw

#107
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Thinking , Happiness

“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.”

George Bernard Shaw

Source: Pygmalion & My Fair Lady

Life , World , Way

“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

“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

“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)

“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

“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

“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

“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)

Life , Imagination

“Society, with all its prisons and bayonets and whips and ostracisms and starvations, is powerless in the face of the Anarchist who is prepared to sacrifice his own life in the battle with it. Our natural safety from the cheap and devastating explosives which every Russian student can make … lies in the fact that brave and resolute men, when they are rascals, will not risk their skins for the good of humanity, and, when they are sympathetic enough to care for humanity, abhor murder, and never commit it until their consciences are outraged beyond endurance. The remedy is, then, simply not to outrage their consciences.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

Life , Men , Nature

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

Life , World , Nature , Joy

“You can't make a man a Christian unless you first make him believe he is a sinner.”

George Bernard Shaw

Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living (1937), p. 17
Misattributed

“I make no vows. I take my chance. ... It means that I fear certainty as you fear uncertainty. It means that nothing is certain but uncertainty. If I bind the future I bind my will. If I bind my will I strangle creation.”

George Bernard Shaw Back to Methuselah

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

Chance , Future , Fear