George Bernard Shaw

Animals are my friends… and I don’t eat my friends.

Most people do not pray; they only beg.

Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

The Jews generally give value. They make you pay; but they deliver the goods. In my experience the men who want something for nothing are invariably Christians.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

When the desire ain’t on me I don’t need help. When it is on me I don’t want any. See? Like the old fellah that never mended his roof. Said on a wet day he couldn’t do it and on a dry day it was as good as anybody’s.

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.

Water is the only drink for a wise man.

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.

An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans.

No member of society has the right to teach any doctrine contrary to what society holds to be true.

The liar’s punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.

No matter how hard the past is, we can always begin again.

Language is the dress of thought.

Five minutes of today are worth as much to me, as five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today.

Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.

Usually the modest person passes for someone reserved, the silent for a sullen person.

There are two great rules of life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end get what he wants if he only tries. This is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is more or less an exception to the general rule.