“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)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake a…" by George Bernard Shaw?

George Bernard Shaw photo

George Bernard Shaw 413

Irish playwright 1856–1950

Related quotes

“Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Why Socialists Don't Believe in Fun" http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/fun.html, Tribune (20 December 1943)
Context: Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.

“Wealth often takes away chances from men as well as poverty. There is none to tell the rich man to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life.”

Sean O`Casey (1880–1964) Irish writer

Rose and Crown (New York: Macmillan, 1952) p. 282.

“It is the greatest mistake to think that man is always one and the same. A man is never the same for long. He is continually changing. He seldom remains the same even for half an hour.”

G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, composer and writer

In Search of the Miraculous (1949)

“Make no mistake about it. I don't want a man in here to go back home thinking otherwise; we are going to win.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

Remarks at a Meeting of the National Alliance of Businessmen (16 March 1968). http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=28740
1960s

“If you want to make an ordinary man happy, or think that he is happy, give him money, power, flattery, gifts, honours. If you want to make a wise man happy - improve yourself!”

Idries Shah book Reflections

Source: Reflections

“Michael smiled at me a little. “You’re a good man, Harry. But you’re making the same mistake Nicodemus always has—and the same one Karrin did.” “What mistake?” “You all think the critical word in the phrase ‘Sword of Faith’ is ‘sword.”

Jim Butcher book Skin Game

Source: Skin Game

“The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

As quoted by Jacob A. Riis in Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen (1904), chapter XVI A Young Men's Hero http://www.bartleby.com/206/16.html
1900s

“For life makes no mistakes and always gives man that which man first gives himself.”

Neville Goddard (1905–1972) American author and lecturer

Source: The Law and Other Essays on Manifestation

“I suppose, at the smallest average, for the making of a single rich man, we make a thousand whose life-long is one flood-tide of misery. The charnel-houses of poverty are in the shadow of the palace; and as one is splendid, so is the other dark, poisonous, degraded. How can a man grow rich, except on the spoils of others' labour? His boasted prudence and economy, what is it but the most skilfully availing himself of their necessities, most resolutely closing up his heart against their cries to him for help?”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Letter VII
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

“The rich man… is always sold to the institution which makes him rich.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

Related topics