George Bernard Shaw

How can what an Englishman believes be hearsay? It is a contradiction in terms.

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.

Whenever you wish to do anything against the law, Cicely, always consult a good solicitor first.

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

I talk democracy to these men and women. I tell them that they have the vote, and that theirs is the kingdom and the power and the glory. I say to them You are supreme: exercise your power. They say, That’s right: tell us what to do; and I tell them. I say Exercise our vote intelligently by voting for me. And they do. That’s democracy; and a splendid thing it is too for putting the right men in the right place.

How does it happen, Maecenas, that no one is content with that lot of which he has chosen or which chance has thrown his way, but praises those who follow a different course?

Where God does not govern, tyrants will rule.

It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God.

Creativity is a consequence of action, not its motivation. Do what needs to be done and then ask whether it was possible.

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. ‘Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.

The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated; the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.

It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, Know thyself, and too often leads to a self-estimate which will subsist in the absence of that fruit by which alone the quality of the tree is made evident.

The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put.

Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.

Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.