George Bernard Shaw

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.

If all the economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.

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

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

All diseases run into one, old age.

A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.

I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology.

I’m only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler.

They say that history repeats itself, so if you don’t learn from the past you will make the same mistakes. So I have become an archaeologist of my own history. Digging up what has long since been buried, exhuming those forgotten fragments. Trying to distinguish what is real from folklore, trying to gain understanding, rather than relying on myths.

When you cannot get a compliment in any other way pay yourself one.

If you believe in fate, believe in it, at least, for your good.

A man’s style is his mind’s voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices.

It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady.

To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.

All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.

The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that ain’t so.

The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is too near.

Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.

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.