Best 1263 quotes of George Bernard Shaw on MyQuotes

A book is like a child: it is easier to bring it into the world than to control it when it is launched there.

A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.

Absolute honesty is as absurd an abstraction as an absolute temperature or an absolute value.

A child hasn't a grown-up person's appetite for affection. A little of it goes a long way with them; and they like a good imitation of it better than the real thing, as every nurse knows.

A cigarette is a pinch of tobacco rolled in paper with fire at one end and a fool at the other.

A conquered nation is like a man with cancer: he can think of nothing else.

A contract for better for worse is a contract that should not be tolerated.

A critic is one who leaves no turn unstoned.

A critic recently described me, with deadly acuteness, as having 'a kindly dislike of my fellow-creatures.' Perhaps dread would have been nearer the mark than dislike; for man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.

Activity is the only road to knowledge.

A day's work is a day's work, neither more nor less, and the man or woman who does it needs a day's sustenance, a night's repose and due leisure, whether they be painter or ploughman.

A dinner! How horrible! I am to be made the pretext for killing all those wretched animals and birds, and fish! Thank you for nothing. Now if it were to be a fast instead of a feast; say a solemn three days' abstention from corpses in my honour, I could at least pretend to believe that it was disinterested. Blood sacrifices are not in my line

A doctor's reputation is made by the number of eminent men who die under his care.

A family is a tyranny ruled over by it's weakest member.

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.

Affection between adults - if they are really adult in mind and not merely grown up children - and creatures so relatively selfish and cruel as children necessarily are without knowing it or meaning it, cannot be called natural.

A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of marble; then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant.

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

After studying the Hungarian language for years, I can confidently conclude that had Hungarian been my mother tongue, it would have been more precious. Simply because through this extraordinary, ancient and powerful language it is possible to precisely describe the tiniest differences and the most secretive tremors of emotions.

A genius is a person who is seeing further and probing deeper than other people has a different set of ethical valuations from their and has energy enough to give effect to this extra vision and its valuations in whatever manner best suits his or her

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

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

A great social reformer.

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.

A healthy nation is as unconscious of its nationality as a healthy man of his bones. But if you break a person's nationality it will think of nothing else but getting it set again.

Alcohol is a very necessary article. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

A learned man is an idler who kills time by study.

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.

All Artists are Anarchists.

All autobiographies are lies. I do not mean unconscious, unintentional lies: I mean deliberate lies.

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.

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions.

All classes in proportion to their lack of travel and familiarity with foreign literature are bellicose, prejudiced against foreigners, fond of fighting as a cruel sport - in short, dog-like in their notions of foreign policy.

All dress is fancy dress, is it not, except our natural skins?

All evolution in thought and conduct must at first appear as heresy and misconduct.

All government is cruel; for nothing is so cruel as impunity.

All great art and literature is propaganda.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

All industries are brought under the control of such people [film producers] by Capitalism. If the capitalists let themselves be seduced from their pursuit of profits to the enchantments of art, they would be bankrupt before they knew where they were. You cannot combine the pursuit of money with the pursuit of art.

All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

All progress depends on the unreasonable man.

All progress depends upon the unreasonable person.

All progress is due to the unreasonable person.

All progress means war with society.

All roads end at the grave, which is the gate to nothingness.

All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of storytellers 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.

All this struggling and striving to make the world better is a great mistake. Not that it's wrong to try to improve the world if you know how but simply because struggling and striving are the worst possible ways to go about doing anything!