You see things as they are and ask, 'Why' I dream things as they never were and ask, 'Why not'
George Bernard Shaw Quotations
We found 198 matching quotations.
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.
A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.
To be clever enough to get a great deal of money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a footrule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage.
The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
I make a fortune from criticizing the policy of the government, and then hand it over to the government in taxes to keep it going.
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.
Crude classifications and false generalizations are the curse of organized life.
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.
No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another.
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must man be of learning from experience.
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
You see things, and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were, and say "Why not?
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
Nobel prize money is a lifebelt thrown to a swimmer who has already reached the shore in safety.
First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.
The 100% American is 99% an idiot.
Self-denial is not a virtue it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.
We don't stop playing because we grow old we grow old because we stop playing.
Lack of money is the root of all evil.
A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.
The Churches must learn humility as well as teach it.
Money enables us to get what we want instead of what other people think we want.
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them that's the essense of inhumanity.
Fashions are the only induced epidemics, proving that epidemics can be induced by tradesmen.
The art of government is the organization of idolatry.
Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.
I can't forgive my friends for dying I don't find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.
Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.
When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth.
Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature
A pessimist thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.
Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
A dramatic critic is a man who leaves no turn unstoned.
If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.
Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.
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.
He who has never hoped can never despair.
A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.
We are told that when Jehovah created the world he saw that it was good what would he say now
Martyrdom... is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.
Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.
Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.
Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.
The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.
There is only one universal passion fear.
What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness.
Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.
Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
I never resist temptation because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.
All my life, affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.
One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.
We have not lost faith, but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession.
The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.
I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor.
Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich--something for nothing.
We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.
Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.
Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.
You see things and you say, 'Why' But I dream things that never were and I say, Why not
England and America are two countries seperated by the same language.
When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.
Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.
There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.
Life does not cease to be funny when people die; any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
A learned man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge: it is more dangerous than ignorance.
If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.
The chief objection of playing wind instruments is that it prolongs the life of the player.
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
An institution which is populare because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
There is no love sincerer than the love of food.
Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
It is most unwise for people in love to marry.
Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
I'm not a teacher only a fellow-traveller of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead-ahead of myself as well as you.
It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.
Swindon What will history say Burgoyne History, sir, will tell lies as usual.
Reviewing has one advantage over suicide: in suicide you take it out on yourself; in reviewing you take it out on other people.
My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably.
Martyrdom is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
Better keep yourself clean and bright you are the window through which you must see the world.
What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
It is most unwise for people in love to marry
Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.
This is the true joy in life -- being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one...
Audacious ribald: your laughter will finish in hideous boredom before morning.
I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.
Hell is full of musical amateurs.
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
Take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then say it with the utmost levity.
What we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real.
If more than ten percent of the population likes a painting it should be burned, for it must be bad.
Hell is full of musical amateurs music is the brandy of the damned.
Do you know what a pessimist is A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.
Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it.
There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.
We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence...on pain of liquidation.
Beware of the man whose God is in the skies.
A lifetime of happiness No man alive could bear it it would be hell on earth.
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time.
If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a footrule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved.
Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.
The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.
Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.
You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
Success covers a multitude of blunders.
I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.
Do you know what a pessimist is? A person who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself and hates them for it.
He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are more true: they are the only things that are true.
He who can, does. He who cannot teaches.
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners.
In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.
Virtue is insufficient temptation.
What use are cartridges in battle I always carry chocolate instead.
In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.
A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.
Make money and the whole nation will conspire to call you a gentleman.
Activity is the only road to knowledge.
I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.
Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage -- it can be delightful.
I?d like to be the person I could have been but never was.
Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than saying a drunken man is happier than a sober man.
What is virtue but the trades unionism of the married.
While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?
Democracy: The substitution of election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
England and America are two countries separated by a common language.
A man ought to be able to be fond of his wife without making a fool of himself about her.
The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood.
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
The fickleness of the women whom I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.
My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.
The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure is occupation.
In Heaven an angel is nobody in particular.
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.
Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.
The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist.
Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.
Nothing ever is done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.
Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.
We should have had socialism already, but for the socialists.
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth.
All censorships exist to prevent any one 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.
Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.
Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.
My way of joking is to tell the truth. It is the funniest joke in the world.
Let a short Act of Parliament be passed, placing all street musicians outside the protection of the law, so that any citizen may assail them with stones, sticks, knives, pistols, or bombs without incurring any penalties.
The love of money is the root of all virtue.
Alcohol is a very necessary article... It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
What God hath joined together no man shall put asunder: God will take care of that.
A learned man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge it is more dangerous than ignorance.
We must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.
The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
Life is a disease; and the only diference between one another is the stage of the disease at which he lives.
You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.
All professions are conspiracies against the laity.