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George Bernard Shaw
242 quotes
“Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it...”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1893 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In The World (15 November 1893)
“Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it...”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1890 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In The World (18 July 1894), Music in London 1890-1894: Being Criticisms Contributed Week by Week to The World (New York: Vienna House, 1973)
“No public man in these islands ever believes that the Bible means what it says: he is always convinced that it says what he means; and I have no reason to hope that Mr Coote may be an exception to the rule.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1895 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Living Pictures", The Saturday Review, LXXIX (April 6, 1895), 443; reprinted in Our Theatres in the Nineties (1932). Vol. 1. London: Constable & Co. 79-86
“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 (1856–1950) first seen 1895 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Answers to Nine Questions (September 1896), answers to nine questions submitted by Clarence Rook, who had interviewed him in 1895
“We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Candida, Act I (1898)
“I'm only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler. I don't like beer.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: You Never Can Tell, Act I (1898)
“The great advantage of a hotel is that it's a refuge from home life.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My specialty is being right when other people are wrong.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I had not achieved a success; but I provoked an uproar; and the sensation was so agreeable that I resolved to try again.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant, Vol. I, Preface (1898)
“There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, Vol. II, Preface (1898)
“Why should you call me to account for eating decently? If I battened on the scorched corpses of animals, you might well ask me why I did that. Why should I be filthy and inhuman? Why should I be an accomplice in the wholesale horror and degradation of the slaughter-house?”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview "What Vegetarianism Really Means: a Talk with Mr Bernard Shaw", in Vegetarian (15 January 1898), reprinted in Shaw: Interviews and Recollections, edited by A. M. Gibbs, 1990, p. 401
“Just as the liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe any one else; so a guilty society can more easily be persuaded that any apparently innocent act is guilty than that any apparently guilty act is innocent.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The salvation of the world depends on the men who will not take evil good-humouredly, and whose laughter destroys the fool instead of encouraging him.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's well to be off with the Old Woman before you're on with the New.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People are always blaming circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know Miss Warren is a great devotee of the Gospel of Getting On.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh, you are a very poor soldier — a chocolate cream soldier!”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I never apologize.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You're not a man, you're a machine.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hail, Sphinx: salutation from Julius Caesar! I have wandered in many lands, seeking the lost regions from which my birth into this world exiled me, and the company of creatures such as I myself. I have found flocks and pastures, men and cities, but no other Caesar, no air native to me, no man kindred to me, none who can do my day's deed, and think my night's thought.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My way hither was the way of destiny; for I am he of whose genius you are the symbol: part brute, part woman, and part God — nothing of man in me at all. Have I read your riddle, Sphinx?”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Theodotus: Caesar: you are a stranger here, and not conversant with our laws. The kings and queens of Egypt may not marry except with their own royal blood. Ptolemy and Cleopatra are born king and consort just as they are born brother and sister. Britannus (shocked): Caesar: this is not proper. Theodotus (outraged): How! Caesar (recovering his self-possession): Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The novelties of one generation are only the resuscitated fashions of the generation before last.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1900 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Three Plays for Puritans, Preface (1900)
“I delight in the war more & more. It has waked up the country out of its filthy wallowing in money (blood is a far superior bath); and it has put a fourpence on the Income Tax which will never come off it if the Fabian can help it; so that Old Age Pensions will be within reach at the end of the ten years repayment period, if not sooner. ... Charrington calls me a Tory because I declare for Imperialism as our social theory.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the Boer War; letter to Henry Stephens Salt (12 March 1900), as cited in Dan H. Laurence (ed) Collected Letters: 1898–1910 (1985), p. 153
“The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1901 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Devil's Disciple, Act II (1901)
“Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“: What will History say? : History, sir, will tell lies, as usual.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was a cannibal for twenty-five years. For the rest I have been a vegetarian. It was Shelley who first opened my eyes to the savagery of my diet.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1901 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview "Who I Am, and What I Think", in Frank Harris's periodical The Candid Friend (May 1901), reprinted in Sixteen Self Sketches, 1949, p. 53; quoted in Desmond King-Hele, Shelley: His Thought and Work, 1984, p. 42
“You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1905 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Irrational Knot, Preface (1905)
“[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1905 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Irrational Knot (1905)
“To understand a saint, you must hear the devil's advocate; and the same is true of the artist.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1908 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Sanity of Art: An Exposure of the Current Nonsense about Artists being Degenerate (1908)
“Assassination is the extreme form of censorship; and it seems hard to justify an incitement to it on anti-censorial principles.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet (1909): The Rejected Statement, Pt. I: The Limits to Toleration
“This is the real enemy, the invader from the East, the Druze, the ruffian, the oriental parasite; in a word: the Jew.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1925 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: London Morning Post, December 3, 1925
“This craving for bouquets by Jews is a symptom of racial degeneration. The Jews are worse than my own people. Those Jews who still want to be the chosen race (chosen by the late Lord Balfour) can go to Palestine and stew in their own juice. The rest had better stop being Jews and start being human beings.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Literary Digest, October 12, 1932
“The way to deal with worldly people is to frighten them by repeating their scandalous whisperings aloud.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The public want actresses, because they think all actresses bad. They don't want music or poetry because they know that both are good. So actors and actresses thrive and poets and composers starve.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are some men who are considered quite ugly, but who are more remarkable than pretty people. You often see that in artists.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All very fine, Mary; but my old-fashioned common sense is better than your clever modern nonsense.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you leave your art, the world will beat you back to it. The world has not an ambition worth sharing, or a prize worth handling. Corrupt successes, disgraceful failures, or sheeplike vegetation are all it has to offer. I prefer Art, which gives me a sixth sense of beauty, with self-respect: perhaps also an immortal reputation in return for honest endeavour in a labour of love.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Perhaps woman's art is of woman's life a thing apart, 'tis man's whole existence; just as love is said to be the reverse — though it isn't.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I hate singers, a miserable crew who think that music exists only in their own throats.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man's own self is the last person to believe in him, and is harder to cheat than the rest of the world.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Composers are not human; They can live on diminished sevenths, and be contented with a pianoforte for a wife, and a string quartet for a family.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Geniuses are horrid, intolerant, easily offended, sleeplessly self-conscious men, who expect their wives to be angels with no further business in life than to pet and worship their husbands. Even at the best they are not comfortable men to live with; and a perfect husband is one who is perfectly comfortable to live with.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source