George Bernard Shaw

What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness.

If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn’t be anything for us to do.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It is the funniest joke in the world.

Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run.

…with the black marble which gives the fireplace the air of a miniature family vault, to suggest early Victorian commercial respectability, belief in money, Bible fetichism, fear of hell always at war with fear of poverty, instinctive horror of the passionate character of art, love and Roman Catholic religion, and all the first fruits of plutocracy in the early generations of the industrial revolution.

What we need is Star Peace and not Star Wars.

A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.

On the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that on other days, on other fields will bear the fruits of victory.

Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling ones pulse and taking ones temperature. I see that a speaker at the week-end said that this was a time when leaders should keep their ears to the ground. All I can say is that the British nation will find it very hard to look up to leaders who are detected in that somewhat ungainly posture.

People didn’t want war. We were forced in it. How fast we finish it depends on how free a hand our generals and admirals have. The less interference they get from the politicians the quicker they’ll end it.

Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one must know when to blend force with a maneuver, a blow with an agreement.

Once war is forced upon us, there is no alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War’s very object is victory-not prolonged indecision.

The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.

You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.

War is not a matter for the professional pacifist or militarist. It is for the unprofessional people. They finance and fight it, they bear its losses. Therefore, they should have the deciding voice concerning it. To do this, they require all the information upon which decisions are made. They should know in a difference, whether it is soluble by rational intelligence, or inevitable by force. Not once in a thousand instances would our people (this may not be true of all peoples, however) approve an offensive war. Never would they be lax in defensive action. For this is their country. However, most of their enemies are within it.

I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it.

After all the field of battle possesses many advantages over the drawing-room. There at least is no room for pretension or excessive ceremony, no shaking of hands or rubbing of noses, which make one doubt your sincerity, but hearty as well as hard hand-play. It at least exhibits one of the faces of humanity, the former only a mask.

I have a deep sympathy with war, it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.

Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego.