Quotes by George Bernard Shaw

MRS PEARCE. Mr Higgins: youre tempting the girl. It’s not right. She should think of the future.HIGGINS. At her age! Nonsense! Time enough to think of the future when you havnt any future to think of.

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

Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery - its the sincerest form of learning.

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.

An author who gives a manager or publisher any rights in his work except those immediately and specifically required for its publication or performance is for business purposes an imbecile.

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild is a snivelling modern invention, with no warrant in the gospels.

Theres only one way of escaping trouble; and thats killing things. Henry Higgins, Act V, Pygmalion

HIGGINS. Have you no morals, man?DOOLITTLE [unabashed] Cant afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me.

The problem with communication…is the illusion that is has been accomplished.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

I know your head aches. I know youre tired. I know your nerves are as raw as meat in a butchers window. But think what youre trying to accomplish - just think what youre dealing with. The majesty and grandeur of the English language; its the greatest possession we have. The noblest thoughts that ever flowed through the hearts of men are contained in its extraordinary, imaginative and musical mixtures of sounds. And thats what youve set yourself out to conquer, Eliza. And conquer it you will.

I need not repeat familiar arguments about the waste of teachers time, and the difficulties thrown in the way of English children trying to learn their own language; or the fact that nobody without a visual memory for words ever succeeds in spelling conventionally, however highly educated he or she may be.

HOSTESS. Oh, nonsense! She speaks English perfectly.NEPOMMUCK. Too perfectly. Can you shew me any English woman who speaks English as it should be spoken? Only foreigners who have been taught to speak it speak it well.

HIGGINS [aggrieved] Do you mean that my language is improper?MRS HIGGINS. No, dearest: it would be quite proper - say on a canal barge...

A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds has no right to be anywhere - no right to live. Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift to articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton...

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

THE DEVIL. As far as I went, yes. But I will now go further, and confess to you that men get tired of everything, of heaven no less than of hell; and that all history is nothing but a record of the oscillations of the world between these two extremes. An epoch is but a swing of the pendulum; and each generation thinks the world is progressing because it is always moving. But when you are as old as I am; when you have a thousand times wearied of heaven, like myself and the Commander, and a thousand times wearied of hell, as you are wearied now, you will no longer imagine that every swing from heaven to hell is an emancipation, every swing from hell to heaven an evolution. Where you now see reform, progress, fulfilment of upward tendency, continual ascent by Man on the stepping stones of his dead selves to higher things, you will see nothing but an infinite comedy of illusion....

Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error.