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(no category)
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My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.
-George Bernard Shaw
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America
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"England and America are two countries separated by the same language."
-George Bernard Shaw, "Reader's Digest", November, 1942
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Argument & Debate
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"A man never tells you anything until you contradict him."
-George Bernard Shaw
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Censorship
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All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. There is the whole case against censorships in a nutshell.
-George Bernard Shaw, Preface to Mrs. Warren's Profession
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Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Chocolate
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"What use are cartridges in battle? I always carry chocolate instead."
-George Bernard Shaw, 1894
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Community
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This is the true joy in life: Being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, 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. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
-George Bernard Shaw, attributed as from a "speech at Brighton"
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Consumerism
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You have no more right to consume happiness without producing it, than you do to consume wealth without producing it.
-George Bernard Shaw, Candida, Act I, 1898
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Democracy
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Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
-George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, "The Revolutionist's Handbook"
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Education
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A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Ethics
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Rich men without convictions are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Home
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Home life, as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.
-George Bernard Shaw, [from the 1911 preface 'Hearth and Home' to his book 'Getting Married']
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Imagination
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"You see things as they are and ask, 'Why?' I dream things as they never were and ask, 'Why not?'"
[the serpent saying to Eve]
-George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah
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Independence
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Independence? That's middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
-George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, 1912
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Industry
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...with the black marble which gives the fireplace the air of a miniature family vault, to suggest early Victorian commercial respectability, belief in money, Bible fetichism, fear of hell always at war with fear of poverty, instinctive horror of the passionate character of art, love and Roman Catholic religion, and all the first fruits of plutocracy in the early generations of the industrial revolution.
-George Bernard Shaw, You Never Can Tell
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Instinct
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"Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious."
-George Bernard Shaw
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Laughter
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"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."
-George Bernard Shaw
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Liberty
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"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."
-George Bernard Shaw
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Mankind, Man
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In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence, and famine.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Mirrors
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You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Patriotism
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You'll never have a quiet world until you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
-George Bernard Shaw, O'Flaherty, V.C.
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Patronize, Patronizing
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She has taken a patronizing fancy to her father, the Admiral, who accepts her condescension gratefully as age brings more and more home to him the futility of his social position.
-George Bernard Shaw, An Unsocial Socialist (CH. XVIII)
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Perception
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"Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world."
-George Bernard Shaw
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Play/Games
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He hates chess. He says it is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something clever when they are only wasting their time.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Progress
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"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people."
-George Bernard Shaw
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Restraint
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It took me twenty years of studied self-restraint, aided by the natural decay of my faculties, to make myself dull enough to be accepted as a serious person by the British public.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Secrets
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There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.
-George Bernard Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession
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Shame
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We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Time
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"Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough."
-George Bernard Shaw
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Truth
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"All great truths begin as blasphemies."
-George Bernard Shaw
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Unrequited Love
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Girls, like men, want to be petted, pitied, and made much of, when they are diffident, in low spirits, or in unrequited love. These are services which the weak cannot render to the strong and which the strong will not render to the weak, except when there is also a difference of sex.
-George Bernard Shaw, An Unsocial Socialist (Chapter VII)
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Work
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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, Man and Superman (Epistle Dedicatory To Arthur Bingham Walkley), 1903
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Books by and about George Bernard Shaw
