George Bernard Shaw

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.

Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones. All men mean well.

Being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional.

If a better system is thine, impart it; if not, make use of mine.

Believing that I was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of the commonwealth as a kind of common property which, like the air and the water, belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might be best served, and what service I was myself best fitted by nature to perform.

A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning’s greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

Few sinners are saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.

There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find an Englishman doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles.

That after an hour’s silence he can say, The one thing I cannot stand is dampness… That’s all, it took him an hour to work that out.

All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.

Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos; trees, clouds, everything.

There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.

With a burst of joy, my heels sprout wings, smile dancing. My heart sings like a bird caged, set free to soar, senses heightened like never before. Life. Is. Good.

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.