George Bernard Shaw

I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.

In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence, and famine.

A man’s interest in the world is only an overflow from his interest in himself.

The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves.

The reason why men do not obey us is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

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

Defeat in itself was part and parcel of the great gambling game of politics. A man who could not accept it and try again was not of the stuff of which leaders are made.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — `Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

I tell you there isn’t a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it’s bearing children, and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better been left to the men.

Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching Man to regard himself as an experiment in the realization of God, to regard his hands as God’s hand, his brain as God’s brain, his purpose as God’s purpose. He must regard God as a helpless Longing, which longed him into existence by its desperate need for an executive organ.

Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness!

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.

There are thousands hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.

I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.