Patriotism, or Peace? http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Patriotism,_or_Peace%3F (1896), translated by Nathan Haskell Dole
Variant:
I have already several times expressed the thought that in our day the feeling of patriotism is an unnatural, irrational, and harmful feeling, and a cause of a great part of the ills from which mankind is suffering, and that, consequently, this feeling – should not be cultivated, as is now being done, but should, on the contrary, be suppressed and eradicated by all means available to rational men. Yet, strange to say – though it is undeniable that the universal armaments and destructive wars which are ruining the peoples result from that one feeling – all my arguments showing the backwardness, anachronism, and harmfulness of patriotism have been met, and are still met, either by silence, by intentional misinterpretation, or by a strange unvarying reply to the effect that only bad patriotism (Jingoism or Chauvinism) is evil, but that real good patriotism is a very elevated moral feeling, to condemn which is not only irrational but wicked.
What this real, good patriotism consists in, we are never told; or, if anything is said about it, instead of explanation we get declamatory, inflated phrases, or, finally, some other conception is substituted for patriotism – something which has nothing in common with the patriotism we all know, and from the results of which we all suffer so severely.
Patriotism and Government http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Patriotism_and_Government (1900)
Context: Tell people that war is an evil, and they will laugh; for who does not know it? Tell them that patriotism is an evil, and most of them will agree, but with a reservation. "Yes," they will say, "wrong patriotism is an evil; but there is another kind, the kind we hold." But just what this good patriotism is, no one explains.
“The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories.”
Page 169.
Thinking in systems: A Primer (2008)
Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: A Fear of Love
As quoted in What Billingsgate Thought: A Country Gentleman's Views on Snobbery (1919) by William Alexander Newman Dorland
“It’s no use crying over spilt evils. It’s better to mop them up laughing.”
Gypsy and Ginger (1920)
Pranks to try on people in the hospital! http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=jokes
The Best Page in the Universe
“Love is not always evil, truth to tell;
Though harm he does, he serves the good as well.”
Dunque Amor sempre rio non si ritrova:
Se spesso nuoce, anco talvolta giova.
Canto XXV, stanza 2 (tr. B. Reynolds)
Orlando Furioso (1532)
“If you're going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh; otherwise they'll kill you.”
Credited to Shaw in the lead in to the mockumentary C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2004) and other recent works, but this or slight variants of it are also sometimes attributed to W. C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, and Oscar Wilde. It might possibly be derived from Shaw's statement in John Bull's Other Island (1907): "My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world."
Another possibility is that it is derived from Shaw's characteristic of Mark Twain: "He has to put things in such a way as to make people who would otherwise hang him believe he is joking."
Variants:
If you are going to tell people the truth, you'd better make them laugh. Otherwise, they'll kill you.
If you're going to tell people the truth, you'd better make them laugh. Otherwise, they'll kill you.
Disputed
The First Octavo Notebook https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gD981HZ190BUJF-3czZNX3DsFWvqp3cq-Z4QS4d-9gw/edit?hl=en
The Blue Octavo Notebooks (1954)
