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There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Man and Superman
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Annajanska
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.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Maxims for Revolutionists
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny. They have only shifted it to another shoulder.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Man and Superman
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Caesar and Cleopatra
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Candida
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Maxims for Revolutionists
The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for a living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Man and Superman
A love affair should always be a honeymoon. And the only way to make sure of that is to keep changing the man; for the same man can never keep it up.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Too True to Be Good
Christianity as a specific doctrine was slain with Jesus, suddenly and utterly. He was hardly cold in his grave, or high in his heaven (as you please), before the apostles dragged the tradition of him down to the level of the thing it has remained ever since.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, preface to Androcles and the Lion
There is no love sincerer than the love of food.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Man and Superman
When a man of normal habits is ill, everyone hastens to assure him that he is going to recover. When a vegetarian is ill (which fortunately very seldom happens), everyone assures him that he is going to die, and that they told him so, and that it serves him right. They implore him to take at least a little gravy, so as to give himself a chance of lasting out the night.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Saturday Review, May 21, 1898
A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, The Star, Apr. 5, 1890
Better see rightly on a pound a week than squint on a million.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, preface, Plays Unpleasant
Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn’t really hurt.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Heartbreak House
Give a man health and a course to steer; and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Captain Brassbound's Conversion
The censorship method ... is that of handing the job over to some frail and erring mortal man, and making him omnipotent on the assumption that his official status will make him infallible and omniscient.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, speech, Jan. 20, 1935
Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, The Irrational Knot
Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Man and Superman
Chess ... a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, The Irrational Knot
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Maxims for Revolutionists
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, The Devil's Disciple
He who has never hoped can never despair.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Caesar and Cleopatra
We must reform society before we can reform ourselves.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, preface to Misalliance
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
BERNARD SHAW, preface, Immaturity
Patriotism: Your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, The Public: A Journal of Democracy, 1910
Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Maxims for Revolutionists
Human misery is so appalling nowadays that if we allowed ourselves to dwell on it we should only add imaginary miseries of our own to the real miseries of others without doing them any good.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, letter to Siegfried Trebitsch, Mar. 1940
Art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Back to Methuselah
A learned man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge: it is more dangerous than ignorance.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Man and Superman
The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Maxims for Revolutionists
He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Major Barbara
My specialty is being right when other people are wrong.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, You Never Can Tell
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, Quintessence of Ibsenism
When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Back to Methuselah
He who desires a lifetime of happiness with a beautiful woman desires to enjoy the taste of wine by keeping his mouth always full of it.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Maxims for Revolutionists
Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Heartbreak House
Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Heartbreak House
Remember that the progress of the world depends on your knowing better than your elders.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, A Treatise on Parents and Children
There is the eternal war between those who are in the world for what they can get out of it and those who are in the world to make it a better place for everybody to live in.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, On the Rocks
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