George Bernard Shaw

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

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

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.

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

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

There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find an Englishman doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles.

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again. The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.

Love grows. Lust wastes by Enjoyment, and the Reason is, that one springs from an Union of Souls, and the other from an Union of Sense.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.

If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.

The pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.

The idea of perfection always gives one a chance to talk without knowing facts.

There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it.

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. They prefer suffering that is familiar to the unknown.

Poverty is often concealed in splendor, and often in extravagance. It is the task of many people to conceal their neediness from others. Consequently they support themselves by temporary means, and everyday is lost in contriving for tomorrow.

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.