George Bernard Shaw

The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing.

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

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the airplane, the pessimist the parachute.

Even the youngest of us may be wrong sometimes.

Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.

For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.

Love grows. Lust wastes by Enjoyment, and the Reason is, that one springs from an Union of Souls, and the other from an Union of Sense.

I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One’s enough.

The highest compact we can make with our fellow is – Let there be truth between us two forevermore.

No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.

People who are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together.

When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else… you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself.

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life … would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.

Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one’s heart; but death is a splendid thing –a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.

Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.

It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.