George Bernard Shaw

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

The ordinary man is an anarchist. He wants to do as he likes. He may want his neighbor to be governed, but he himself doesn’t want to be governed. He is mortally afraid of government officials and policemen.

Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.

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.

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.

I want to be all used up when I die.

It’s powerful to have strong men but what does that strength mean?

Sexes make no Difference; since in Souls there is none: And they are the Subjects of Friendship.

We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change place with an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change and happy in it.

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

At the end of my life, with just one breath left, if you come, I’ll sit up and sing.

But men must know, that in this theatre of man’s life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right.

A minute of thought is greater than an hour of talk.

Between us, we cover all knowledge; he knows all that can be known and I know the rest.

Patron: One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery.

It’s not given to people to judge what’s right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.

The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste; the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.