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George Bernard Shaw
242 quotes
“The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He ain't a copper just look at 'is boots!”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ah-ah-ah-ah-ow-ow-oo-oo!!! I ain't dirty: I washed me face and hands afore I come, I did!”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn't come every day.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wouldn't have ate it, only I'm too lady-like to take it out of my mouth.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't want to talk grammar, I want to talk like a lady.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I ask you, what am I? I'm one of the undeserving poor: thats what I am. Think of what that means to a man.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I aint such a mug as to put up my children to all I know myself.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Walk! Not bloody likely. I am going in a taxi.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I heard your prayers Thank God it's all over!”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You see, lots of the real people can't do it at all: they're such fools that they think style comes by nature to people in their position; and so they never learn. There's always something professional about doing a thing superlatively well.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Time enough to think of the future when you haven't any future to think of.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have to live for others and not for myself; that's middle-class morality.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Independence? That's middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Revolutionary movements attract those who are not good enough for established institutions as well as those who are too good for them.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Howbeit, Paul succeeded in stealing the image of Christ crucified for the figure-head of his Salvationist vessel, with its Adam posing as the natural man, its doctrine of original sin, and its damnation avoidable only by faith in the sacrifice of the cross. In fact, no sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He [the British taxpayer] must be taught that war is not precise or economical. It is almost inconceivably wasteful and extravagant. It burns the house to roast the pig, and even then seldom roasts him effectively..... waste is the law of modern war; and nothing is cheap on the battlefield except the lives of men...... Therefore, my taxpayer, resign yourself to this: that we may fight bravely, fight hard, fight long, fight cunningly, fight recklessly, fight in a hundred and fifty ways, but we cannot fight cheaply.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Daily Chronicle on the 7 March 1917.
“He must be greatly changed. Has he attained the seventh degree of concentration?”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The moment we face it frankly we are driven to the conclusion that the community has a right to put a price on the right to live in it ... If people are fit to live, let them live under decent human conditions. If they are not fit to live, kill them in a decent human way. Is it any wonder that some of us are driven to prescribe the lethal chamber as the solution for the hard cases which are at present made the excuse for dragging all the other cases down to their level, and the only solution that will create a sense of full social responsibility in modern populations?”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in George Bernard Shaw's "Prefaces" in English Prisons Under Local Government, ed. Sidney and Beatrice Webb (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1922) pp. 31-32
“The Nazi movement is in many respects one which has my warmest sympathy.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1925 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In the London Morning Post (3 December 1925)
“Some of the things Mussolini has done, and some that he is threatening to do go further in the direction of Socialism than the English Labour Party could yet venture if they were in power.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to a friend, "Bernard Shaw's Defence of Mussolini" (7 February 1927)
“[Mussolini was] farther to the Left in his political opinions than any of his socialist rivals.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In the Manchester Guardian (1927); quoted in Gareth Griffith, Socialism and Superior Brains (Routledge, 2002), p. 253
“Socialists must be in favor of an aristocratic form of government. We must have the best men for the job . . . In the dictator you must have a man who has not only the power to govern but the force of character to impose himself as dictator whether you like him or not.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Socialism urged to find dictator", Berkeley Daily Gazette (30 November 1927)
“Well, of course, they notice you. You always hide just in the middle of the limelight.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted by Harry Kessler in his diary, 14 November 1929
“It is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to think otherwise than in the fashion of their own period.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Scratch an Englishman and find a Protestant.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“God is on the side of the big battalions.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Political necessities sometimes turn out to be political mistakes.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our natural dispositions may be good; but we have been badly brought up, and are full of anti-social personal ambitions and prejudices and snobberies. Had we not better teach our children to be better citizens than ourselves? We are not doing that at present. The Russians are. That is my last word. Think over it.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who havnt and dont.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Breakages, Limited, the biggest industrial corporation in the country.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I never resist temptation because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“God help England if she had no Scots to think for her!”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We should refuse to tolerate poverty as a social institution not because the poor are the salt of the earth, but because 'the poor in a lump are bad'.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Under Socialism, you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you liked it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live, you would have to live well.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family. But here again, because there is nothing to sell, there is a very general disposition to regard a married woman's work as no work at all, and to take it as a matter of course that she should not be paid for it.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Women are not angels. They are as foolish as men in many ways; but they have had to devote themselves to life whilst men have had to devote themselves to death; and that makes a vital difference in male and female religion. Women have been forced to fear whilst men have been forced to dare: the heroism of a woman is to nurse and protect life, and of a man to destroy it and court death.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Our Theatres In The Nineties (1930)
“I have defined the 100 per cent American as 99 per cent an idiot.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: New York Times (19 December 1930) remarks on Sinclair Lewis receiving the Nobel Prize
“Impression of Gandhi! You might as well ask one to give his impression of the Himalayas.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: When asked about his impression on Gandhi (1931), as quoted in D. G. Tendulkar, Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1952), vol. 3, p. 166.
“I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly tell our children that honesty is the best policy.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Rungs of the Ladder", BBC Radio broadcast (11 July 1932)
“An American has no sense of privacy. He doesn't know what it means. There is no such thing in the country.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in New York (11 April 1933)
“You in America should trust to that volcanic political instinct which I have divined in you.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at New York (11 April 1933)
“Hitler is a very remarkable man, a very able man... What Hitler should have done was not to drive the Jews out, what he ought to have said was, 'I will tolerate the Jews to any extent on condition that no Jew marries a Jewess, on condition that he marries a German.'”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From a lecture before the Fabian Society in London called "The Politics of Unpolitical Animals" (23 November 1933), as cited in "Shaw Heaps Praise upon the Dictators: While Parliaments Get Nowhere, He Says, Mussolini an…