George Bernard Shaw

All genuinely intellectual work is humorous.

When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.

Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.

I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.

If you injure your neighbour, better not do it by halves.

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

My method of getting a play across the footlights is like a revolver shooting: every line has a bullet in it and comes with an explosion.

A statesman who confines himself to popular legislation - or, for the matter of that, a playwright who confines himself to popular plays - is like a blind man's dog who goes wherever the blind man pulls him, on the ground that both of them want to go to the same place.

Socialism never arises in the earlier phases of capitalism, as, for instance, among the pioneers of civilisation in a country where there is plenty of land available for private appropriation by the last comer.

The only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man.

What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.

I want to destroy ownership in order that possession and enjoyment may be raised to the highest point in every section of the community.

Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.

A man who has no office to go, to I don't care who he is, is a trial of which you can have no conception.

The heretic is always better dead. And mortal eyes cannot distinguish the saint from the heretic.

Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability.

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

An index is a great leveller.

The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn't really hurt.

There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

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.

Property is organized robbery.

The frontier between hell and heaven is only the difference between two ways of looking at things.

I am a Christian. That obliges me to be a Communist.

What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?

Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal living conditions on this earth?

Most people do not pray; they only beg.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.

It's easier to replace a dead man than a good picture.

Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes.

Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart's desire; the other is to get it.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

If I were a woman, I'd simply refuse to speak to any man or do anything for men until I'd got the vote.

The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.

I have a strong feeling that I shall be glad when I am dead and done for - scrapped at last to make room for somebody better, cleverer, more perfect than myself.

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

General consultant to mankind.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.

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

If I own a large part of Scotland, I can turn the people off the land practically into the sea or across the sea. I can take women in child-bearing and throw them into the snow and leave them there. That has been done. I can do it for no better reason than I think it is better to shoot deer on the land than allow people to live on it.

Creation is a miracle of daily recurrence. 'A miracle a minute' would not be a bad slogan for God.

I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.

If a woman can, by careful selection of a father and nourishment of herself, produce a citizen with efficient senses, sound organs and a good digestion, she should clearly be secured a sufficient reward for that natural service to make her willing to undertake and repeat it.