George Bernard Shaw

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not an example.

Democracy: The substitution of election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty; what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.

Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.

No question is so difficult to answer as that which the answer is obvious.

I will never do this, says one, yet does it: I am resolved to do this, says another; but flags upon second Thoughts: Or does it, tho’ awkwardly, for his Word’s sake: As if it were worse to break his Word, than to do amiss in keeping it.

Man was made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired.

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

The lofty pine is oftenest shaken by the winds; High towers fall with a heavier crash; And the lightning strikes the highest mountain.

Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, Corn-Pone stands for Self-Approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is Conformity.

A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

We have to learn to be our own best friends because we fall too easily into the trap of being our own worst enemies.

By common consent of all the nations and all the ages the most valuable thing in this world is the homage of men, whether deserved or undeserved.

There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man’s self.

There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.

These are not dark days: these are great days – the greatest days our country has ever lived.

Nothing is more common than mutual dislike, where mutual approbation is particularly expected.

It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.

The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.