A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.
– George Bernard Shaw
Success covers a multitude of blunders.
– George Bernard Shaw
Progress is impossible without change and those who cannot change their minds cannot
change anything.
– George Bernard Shaw
Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you
have before you die; and do not outlive yourself.
– George Bernard Shaw
There is no love sincerer than the love of food.
– George Bernard Shaw
I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from
people.
– George Bernard Shaw
A happy family is but an earlier heaven.
– George Bernard Shaw
Life is not a “brief candle.” It is a splendid torch that I want to make burn as brightly as
possible before handing it on to future generations.
– George Bernard Shaw
Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.
– 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
The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming
is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown.
– George Bernard Shaw
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
– George Bernard Shaw
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of
opportunity.
– George Bernard Shaw
Alcohol is the anethesia by which we endure the operation of life.
– George Bernard Shaw
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt
few.
– George Bernard Shaw
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his
duty.
– George Bernard Shaw
I’m an atheist and I thank God for it.
– George Bernard Shaw
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
– George Bernard Shaw
A woman waits motionless until she is wooed. That is how the spider waits for the fly.
– George Bernard Shaw
A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.
– George Bernard Shaw
What we want to see is the child in pursuit of the knowledge not the knowledge in pursuit of
the child.
– George Bernard Shaw
The best way to get your point across is to entertain.
– George Bernard Shaw
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.
– 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
An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.
– George Bernard Shaw
You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.
– George Bernard Shaw
Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the
door of course.
– George Bernard Shaw
In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and
unhappiness.
– George Bernard Shaw
I created nothing; I invented nothing; I imagined nothing; I perverted nothing; I simply
discovered drama in real life.
– George Bernard Shaw
The only man who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measure anew every time he
sees me, whilst all the rest go on with their old measurements, and expect them to fit me.
– George Bernard Shaw
Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich – something for nothing.
– George Bernard Shaw
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
– George Bernard Shaw
My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen
by his clients, he need not dress respectably.
– George Bernard Shaw
I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per cent an idiot.
– George Bernard Shaw
The longer I live, the more I realize that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the
pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.
– George Bernard Shaw
Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
– George Bernard Shaw
I don’t know if there are men on the moon, but if there are they must be using the earth as
their lunatic asylum.
– George Bernard Shaw
Only lawyers and mental defectives are automatically exempt from jury duty.
– George Bernard Shaw
Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has
the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.
– 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
There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.
– George Bernard Shaw
Patriotism: Your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you
were born in it.
– George Bernard Shaw
Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
– George Bernard Shaw
Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
– George Bernard Shaw
Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he
shouldn’t!
– George Bernard Shaw
My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.
– George Bernard Shaw
Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one,
every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice.
– George Bernard Shaw
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.
– George Bernard Shaw
He who has never hoped can never despair.
– George Bernard Shaw
Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every
soul of us on earth.
– George Bernard Shaw
Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very
clever when they are only wasting their time.
– George Bernard Shaw
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth
without producing it.
– George Bernard Shaw
England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
– George Bernard Shaw
The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not a man of honor.
– George Bernard Shaw
Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.
– George Bernard Shaw
I don’t believe in circumstance; the people that 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, they make them.
– George Bernard Shaw
You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.
– George Bernard Shaw
Hatred is the coward’s revenge for being intimidated.
– George Bernard Shaw
When a man says money can do anything that settles it: he hasn’t got any. 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
It is not pleasure that makes life worth living. It is life that makes pleasure worth having.
– George Bernard Shaw
Once there was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time is
called the Dark Ages.
– George Bernard Shaw
Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.
– George Bernard Shaw
You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will
eat, but you will not live.
– George Bernard Shaw
We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.
– George Bernard Shaw
First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.
– George Bernard Shaw
Youth is such a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
– George Bernard Shaw
No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says
what he means.
– George Bernard Shaw
I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that
honesty is the best policy.
– George Bernard Shaw
Violence is the repartee of the illiterate.
– George Bernard Shaw
A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
– George Bernard Shaw
I’m sorry this letter is so long, I didn’t have time to make it shorter.
– George Bernard Shaw
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
– George Bernard Shaw
Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
– 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
You see things; you say, “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say “Why not?”
– George Bernard Shaw
In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.
– George Bernard Shaw
The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a
mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.
– George Bernard Shaw
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
– George Bernard Shaw
Animals are my friends… and I don’t eat my friends.
– George Bernard Shaw
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
– George Bernard Shaw
The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for a living
at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.
– George Bernard Shaw
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
– George Bernard Shaw