George Bernard Shaw

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

— George Bernard Shaw

Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in short, is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.

— George Bernard Shaw

You cannot be a hero without being a coward.

— George Bernard Shaw

We must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

— George Bernard Shaw

He who has never hoped can never despair.

— George Bernard Shaw

Go anywhere in England where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and really nice English people; and what do you always find? That the stables are the real center of the household.

— George Bernard Shaw

There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough.

— George Bernard Shaw

Human beings are the only animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.

— George Bernard Shaw

Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and calves and that men and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock.

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

I tell you that as long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.

— George Bernard Shaw

The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone: the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood.

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

As long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.

— George Bernard Shaw

The worst sin... is... to be indifferent.

— George Bernard Shaw

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

Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones. All men mean well.

— George Bernard Shaw

A man's interest in the world is only an overflow from his interest in himself.

— George Bernard Shaw

Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run.

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

Suppose the world were only one of God's jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one?

— George Bernard Shaw

The joy in life is to be used for a purpose. I want to be used up when I die.

— George Bernard Shaw

The Jews generally give value. They make you pay; but they deliver the goods. In my experience the men who want something for nothing are invariably Christians.

— George Bernard Shaw

Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination.

— George Bernard Shaw

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

— George Bernard Shaw

If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentlemen, he may pronounce as he pleases.

— George Bernard Shaw

Whenever you wish to do anything against the law, Cicely, always consult a good solicitor first.

— George Bernard Shaw

Leisure may be defined as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes, labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation.

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

Life is a disease; and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You are always at the crisis: I am always in the convalescent stage.

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

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.

— George Bernard Shaw

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

— George Bernard Shaw

The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

— George Bernard Shaw

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity: no really self-respecting woman would take advantage of it.

— George Bernard Shaw

We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!

— George Bernard Shaw

The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.

— George Bernard Shaw

There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.

— George Bernard Shaw

Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.

— George Bernard Shaw

It is a woman's business to get married as soon as possible, and a man's to keep unmarried as long as he can.

— George Bernard Shaw

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.

— George Bernard Shaw

Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.

— George Bernard Shaw

Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid of.

— George Bernard Shaw

If women were as fastidious as men, morally or physically, there would be an end of the race.

— George Bernard Shaw

I have to live for others and not for myself: that's middle-class morality.

— George Bernard Shaw

A miracle is an event which creates faith. That is the purpose and nature of miracles. Frauds deceive. An event which creates faith does not deceive: therefore it is not a fraud, but a miracle.

— George Bernard Shaw

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

Lack of money is the root of all evil.

— George Bernard Shaw

Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis.

— George Bernard Shaw

Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity, and beauty as conspicuously as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness, and ugliness.

— George Bernard Shaw

The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization. Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty. Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys base people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people.

— George Bernard Shaw

Morality is suspecting other people of not being legally married.

— George Bernard Shaw

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

— George Bernard Shaw

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.

— George Bernard Shaw

He never does a proper thing without giving an improper reason for it.

— George Bernard Shaw

Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.

— George Bernard Shaw

Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him.

— George Bernard Shaw

I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.

— George Bernard Shaw

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

Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites.

— George Bernard Shaw

You will never have a quiet world until you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

— George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.

— George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.

— George Bernard Shaw

Better see rightly on a pound a week than squint on a million.

— George Bernard Shaw

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous

— George Bernard Shaw

If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn't be anything for us to do.

— George Bernard Shaw

A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself.

— George Bernard Shaw

The philosopher is Nature's pilot. And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.

— George Bernard Shaw

The camera can represent flesh so superbly that, if I dared, I would never photograph a figure without asking that figure to take its clothes off.

— George Bernard Shaw

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

In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.

— George Bernard Shaw

We mustn't be stiff and stand-off, you know. We must be thoroughly democratic, and patronize everybody without distinction of class.

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist.

— George Bernard Shaw

The seven deadly sins... food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted.

— George Bernard Shaw

The greatest evils and the worst of crimes is poverty; our first duty, a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor.

— George Bernard Shaw

You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

Common people do not pray; they only beg.

— George Bernard Shaw

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

— George Bernard Shaw

All problems are finally scientific problems.

— George Bernard Shaw

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

— George Bernard Shaw

All progress means war with society.

— George Bernard Shaw

All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions.

— George Bernard Shaw

Property is organized robbery.

— George Bernard Shaw

It has taken me nearly 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; and I am not sure that I am not still regarded as a suspicious character in some quarters.

— George Bernard Shaw

Better never than late.

— George Bernard Shaw

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.

— George Bernard Shaw

We know there is intention and purpose in the universe, because there is intention and purpose in us.

— George Bernard Shaw

The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.

— George Bernard Shaw

No question is so difficult to answer as that which the answer is obvious.

— George Bernard Shaw

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

— George Bernard Shaw

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.

— George Bernard Shaw

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

— George Bernard Shaw

My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.

— George Bernard Shaw

All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of story-tellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.

— George Bernard Shaw

My reputation grew with every failure.

— George Bernard Shaw

Well, dearie, men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability. But you can't blame them for that, can you?

— George Bernard Shaw