George Bernard Shaw: Quotes
- Apathy and Indifference
The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.: The Devil's Disciple
- Beauty
Beauty is all very well at first sight, but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?: Man and Superman
- Censorship
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.: The Rejected Statement
- Class
A moderately honest man with a moderately faithful wife, moderate drinkers both, in a moderately healthy house: that is the true middle class unit.: Man and Superman
- Dance
Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.
- Democracy
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.: Man and Superman
- Desire
As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.: Overruled
- Duty and Responsibility
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.: Caesar and Cleopatra
- England and the English
There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find an Englishman doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles.: The Man of Destiny
- England and the English
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.: Man and Superman
- England and the English
The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. . . . It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth, without making some other Englishman despise him.: Pygmalion
- Faithfulness and Loyalty
The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.: The Philanderer
- Fashion
Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics.: The Doctor's Dilemma
- Food and Eating
There is no love sincerer than the love of food.: Man and Superman
- Freedom and Liberty
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.: Man and Superman
- Games and Gambling
Gambling promises the poor what Property performs for the rich.: Man and Superman
- Government
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.: Everybody's Political What's What
- Happiness
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.: Candida
- Happiness
A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.: Man and Superman
- Heaven, Hell, and the Hereafter
If you go to Heaven without being naturally qualified for it, you will not enjoy yourself there.: Man and Superman
- Home
Home is the girl's prison and the woman's workhouse.: Man and Superman
- Language
England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
- Marriage
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.: Man and Superman
- Marriage
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.: Getting Married
- Men
A man who has no office to go to—I don't care who he is—is a trial of which you can have no conception.: The Irrational Knot
- Music
Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.: Man and Superman
- Nostalgia
Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.: The Irrational Knot
- Praise and Flattery
What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.: John Bull's Other Island
- Progress
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
- Reason and Logic
The man who listens to Reason is lost: Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her.: Man and Superman
- Religion
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.: Arms and the Man
- Revolution and Rebellion
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.: Man and Superman
- Self-Sacrifice
Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.: Man and Superman
- 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.: Man and Superman
- Shame
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.: Man and Superman
- Taste
Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.: Man and Superman
- Teachers and Teaching
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.: Man and Superman
- Tolerance
Though all society is founded on intolerance, all improvement is founded on tolerance.: Saint Joan
- Unhappiness
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.: Parents and Children
- Violence and Force
Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.: Major Barbara
- Vision
You see things; and you say, “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say, “Why not?”: Back to Methuselah
- War and Peace
Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.: Heartbreak House
- Youth
It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.: Fanny's First Play