George Bernard Shaw

I have to live for others and not for myself: that’s middle-class morality.

When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.

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.

Rich men without convictions are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity.

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.

He will be loved when dead, who was envied when he was living.

Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Moms. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.

Prejudice not being funded on reason cannot be removed by argument.

It’s a good thing to be foolishly gay once in a while.

If a diplomat says yes, he means perhaps. If he says perhaps he means no. And if he says no, he’s the hell of a diplomat.

Imagination is not a talent of some people but is the health of everyone.

No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful.

I do not hold that we should rearm in order to fight. I hold that we should rearm in order to parley.

It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.

Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence.

England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

Sir, I have found you an argument. I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.

There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.