Bernard Shaw Quotes

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.

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.

You see things; you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.

Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends.

Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.

Youth is wasted on the young.

War does not determine who is right — only who is left.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

There is no love sincerer than the love of food.

I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend ... if you have one." — George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill) "Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one." — Churchill's response

Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

The liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!

People are always blaming their 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.

Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.

Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it....

He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

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.

A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world.

After all, the wrong road always leads somewhere.

Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these 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 play was a great success, but audience was a dismal failure.

A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.

I’m an atheist and I thank God for it.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

You don't stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.

The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor: he took my measure anew every time he saw me, whilst all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend ... if you have one." — George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill) "Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one." — Churchill's response

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.

The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not a man of honor.

Liquor is the chloroform which enables the poor man to endure the painful operation of living.

Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.

What you are to do without me I cannot imagine.

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

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.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

A photographer is like a cod, which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

Doing what needs to be done may not make you happy, but it will make you great.

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.

This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. 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. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read." [As quoted in Literary Censorship in England (in Current Opinion, Vol. 55, No. 5, November 1913)]

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

While browsing in a second-hand bookshop one day, George Bernard Shaw was amused to find a copy of one of his own works which he himself had inscribed for a friend: "To ----, with esteem, George Bernard Shaw." He immediately purchased the book and returned it to the friend with a second inscription: "With renewed esteem, George Bernard Shaw.

If you can’t appreciate what you’ve got, you’d better get what you can appreciate.

I'm not a teacher: only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead - ahead of myself as well as you.

In heaven an angel is no one in particular.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal your own.

All censorships exist to prevent anyone 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 censorship.

I choose not to make a graveyard of my body for the rotting corpses of dead animals.

My religious convictions and scientific views cannot at present be more specifically defined than as those of a believer in creative evolution. I desire that no public monument or work of art or inscription or sermon or ritual service commemorating me shall suggest that I accepted the tenets peculiar to any established church or denomination nor take the form of a cross or any other instrument of torture or symbol of blood sacrifice. [From the will of GBS]

Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby

I have very carefully studied Islam and the life of its Prophet (PBUH). I have done so both as a student of history and as a critic. And I have come to conclusion that Muhammad (PBUH) was indeed a great man and a deliverer and benefactor of mankind which was till then writhing under the most agonising Pain.

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something.

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?

Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.

When you loved me I gave you the whole sun and stars to play with. I gave you eternity in a single moment, strength of the mountains in one clasp of your arms, and the volume of all the seas in one impulse of your soul.

Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery - it's the sincerest form of learning.

A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

I never resist temptation because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.

I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per cent an idiot.

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active. That is why it is necessary to happiness that one should be tired.

We cut the throat of a calf and hang it up by the heels to bleed to death so that our veal cutlet may be white; we nail geese to a board and cram them with food because we like the taste of liver disease; we tear birds to pieces to decorate our women's hats; we mutilate domestic animals for no reason at all except to follow an instinctively cruel fashion; and we connive at the most abominable tortures in the hope of discovering some magical cure for our own diseases by them.

Your friends are all the dullest dogs I know. They are not beautiful: they are only decorated. They are not clean: they are only shaved and starched. They are not dignified: they are only fashionably dressed. They are not educated: they are only college passmen. They are not religious: they are only pewrenters. They are not moral: they are only conventional. They are not virtuous: they are only cowardly. They are not even vicious: they are only “frail.” They are not artistic: they are only lascivious. They are not prosperous: they are only rich. They are not loyal, they are only servile; not dutiful, only sheepish; not public spirited, only patriotic; not courageous, only quarrelsome; not determined, only obstinate; not masterful, only domineering; not self-controlled, only obtuse; not self-respecting, only vain; not kind, only sentimental; not social, only gregarious; not considerate, only polite; not intelligent, only opinionated; not progressive, only factious; not imaginative, only superstitious; not just, only vindictive; not generous, only propitiatory; not disciplined, only cowed; and not truthful at all: liars every one of them, to the very backbone of their souls.