George Bernard Shaw

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

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

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

The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.

There is only one universal passion fear.

Our necessities are few, but our wants are endless.

He who has begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin.

The betrothed and accepted lover has lost the wildest charms of his maiden by her acceptance. She was heaven while he pursued her, but she cannot be heaven if she stoops to one such as he!

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion?

It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.

Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

In the word of no master am I bound to believe.

A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself.

I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.

The ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.

Judges ought to be more learned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

Love can often be misguided and do as much harm as good, but respect can do only good. It assumes that the other person’s stature is as large as one’s own, his rights as reasonable, his needs as important.