George Bernard Shaw quotes

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

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

“A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”

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

“A life time of happiness! No man could bear it: It would be hell on earth.”

“A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.”

“All professions are conspiracies against the laity.”

“As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.”

“Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.”

“Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.”

“Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.”

“Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.”

“He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.”

“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.”

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

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.”

“Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.”

“One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.”

“Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it.”

“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. 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.”

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

“Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.”

“Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.”

“The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.”

“The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.”

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

“The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.”

“There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.”

“We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.”

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

“Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!”

“You see things; you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?”

“You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.”