Loading...
 
Skip to main content

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950), also known simply as Bernard Shaw at his insistence, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. He is also known as one of the best playwrights in English literature.

Wisdom & Quotes

  • The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.
- Man and Superman
  • Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
- Man and Superman
  • He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
- Man and Superman
  • An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
- Man and Superman
  • Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
- Man and Superman, 'Maxims for Revolutionists'
  • A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
- Man and Superman
  • There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.
- Man and Superman
  • It is a woman's business to get married as soon as possible, and a man's to keep unmarried as long as he can.
- Man and Superman
  • Hell is full of musical amateurs.
- Man and Superman
  • Home is the girl's prison and the woman's workhouse.
- Man and Superman, 'Maxims for Revolutionists'
  • Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
- Man and Superman, 'Maxims for Revolutionists'
  • Lack of money is the root of all evil.
- Man and Superman, 'Maxims for Revolutionists'
  • Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
- Man and Superman, 'Maxims for Revolutionists'
  • While we have prisons, it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
- Man and Superman, 'Maxims for Revolutionists'
  • The roulette table pays nobody except him who keeps it. Nevertheless, a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette wheels is unknown.
- Man and Superman, 'Maxims for Revolutionists'
  • The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
- Man and Superman, 'Maxims for Revolutionists'
  • Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny. They have only shifted it to another shoulder.
- Man and Superman, 'The Revolutionist's Handbook'
  • The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.
- The Devil's Disciple
  • I never expect a soldier to think.
- The Devil's Disciple
  • He who bears the brand of Cain shall rule the earth.
- Back to Methuselah
  • Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
- The Rejected Statement
  • Pickering: Have you no morals, man?
Doolittle: Can't afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me.
- Pygmalion
  • We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
- Candida
  • The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization.
- Major Barbara, Preface
  • The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.
- Major Barbara, Preface
  • Property is organized robbery.
- Major Barbara, Preface
  • I have been a common man and a poor man; and it has no romance for me.
- Major Barbara
  • He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
- Major Barbara
  • Hate is the coward's revenge for being humiliated.
- Major Barbara
  • A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honourable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
- The Doctor's Dilemma, Preface
  • Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; and do not outlive yourself.
- The Doctor's Dilemma
  • Science is always simple and profound. It is only the half truths that are dangerous.
- The Doctor's Dilemma
  • My way of joking is to tell the truth.
- John Bull's Other Island
  • Dear sir, your profession has, as usual, destroyed your brain.
- letter to a journalist, Collected Letters, Oan H Laurence, ed.
  • All progress means war with society.
- Getting Married
  • There is only one religion though there are a hundred versions of it.
- Arms and the Man
  • I have never smoked in my life and look forward to a time when the world will look back in amazement and disgust to a practice so unnatural and offensive.
- The New York Herald Tribune, April 14, 1946

Louis D Brandeis

Page last modified on Tuesday September 13, 2022 14:56:02 GMT-0000