George Bernard Shaw

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

We mustn’t be stiff and stand-off, you know. We must be thoroughly democratic, and patronize everybody without distinction of class.

Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid of.

The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.

Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.

I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.

Nature hates calculators.

God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: “I’m with you kid. Let’s go.”

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

Put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.

Live as brave men and face adversity with stout hearts.

Knowledge does not come to us in details, but in flashes of light from heaven.

Religion is as effectually destroyed by bigotry as by indifference.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

The only thing grief as taught me is to know how shallow it is.

I think probably kindness is my number one attribute in a human being. I’ll put it before any of the things like courage or bravery or generosity or anything else.

Europe extends to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond.

I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.