George Bernard Shaw

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books nobody reads.

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.

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

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say I know instead of I am learning, and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity.

This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.

It’s not burn baby burn, but learn, baby, learn, so that you can earn, baby, earn.

There are charms made only for distance admiration.

Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

The painters could be identified by dirty fingernails; the writers by conversation in labored monosyllables and aggressive vulgarities which disguised their minds.

Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.

I don’t think it’s meant for man to know everything at once.

As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits, which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.

Courtesy Life be not so short but that there is always time for courtesy.

He was doing missionary work. But from the outset he had little success in convincing his charges of their responsibility for a sin committed at the beginning of creation, one which, as they understood it, they were ready and capable (indeed, they carried charms to assure it) of duplicating themselves. He did no better convincing them that a man had died on a tree to save them all: an act which one old Indian, if Gwyon had translated correctly, regarded as “rank presumption”.

Every doctor will allow a colleague to decimate a whole countryside sooner than violate the bond of professional etiquette by giving him away.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.

Have good trust in yourself … not in the One that you think you should be, but in the One that you are.

Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.

I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.