George Bernard Shaw

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

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

I don’t want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.

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

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

A friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us. The friend asks no return but that his friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other’s hopes. They are kind to each other’s dreams.

Do not discourage your children from hoarding, if they have a taste to it; whoever lays up his penny rather than part with it for a cake, at least is not the slave of gross appetite; and shows besides a preference always to be esteemed, of the future to the present moment.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.

The ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.

Glances of true beauty can be seen in the faces of those who live in true meekness.

Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce.

The first thing a great person does, is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance.

When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else… you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.

We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.

Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.