Quotes by George Bernard Shaw

How we lavish our money and worship on Shakespeare without in the least knowing why!

And if I am further pressed to declare straightforwardly whether I mean to disparage these authorities [who criticize Ibsen], I reply, pointedly, that I do. I affirm that such criticisms are written by men who know as much of political life as I know of navigation. (P. 56)

You think, because you have a purpose, Nature must have one. You might as well expect it to have fingers and toes because you do.

It is easy-terribly easy-to shake a mans faith in himself. To take advantage of that to to break a mans spirit is Devils work.

My dear: in this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.

Loyalty in a critic is corruption.

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

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

Old-fashioned people think you can have a soul without money. They think the less money you have, the more soul you have. Young people nowadays know better. A soul is a very expensive thing to keep: much more so than a motor car.

We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies.

Some donkeys have amazing luck.

A mans interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself.

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

Well, Ive known over thirty men whove found out how to cure consumption. Why do people go on dying of it, Colly? Devilment I suppose!

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

But I cant stand saying one thing when everyone knows I mean another. Whats the use in such hypocrisy? If people arrange the world that way for women, theres no good pretending it’s arranged the other way...

CHARTERIS [unfolding his arms in terror] No, please. Dont. As a philosopher, it’s my business to tell other people the truth; but it’s not their business to tell it to me. I dont like it: it hurts.

I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anything that had my name on it.

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

The solid earth sways like the treacherous sea beneath the feet of men and spirits alike when the innocent are slain in the name of law, and their wrongs are undone by slandering the pure of heart.