George Bernard Shaw

What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?

Girls, like men, want to be petted, pitied, and made much of, when they are diffident, in low spirits, or in unrequited love. These are services which the weak cannot render to the strong and which the strong will not render to the weak, except when there is also a difference of sex.

Syllables govern the world.

A lifetime of happiness? No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth.

Between persons of equal income there is no social distinction except the distinction of merit. Money is nothing: character, conduct, and capacity are everything. There would be great people and ordinary people and little people, but the great would always be those who had done great things, and never the idiots whose mothers had spoiled them and whose fathers had left them a hundred thousand a year; and the little would be persons of small minds and mean characters, and not poor persons who had never had a chance. That is why idiots are always in favor of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favor of equality.

Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal.

There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.

He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead.

The Chinese said of themselves several thousand years ago: China is a sea that salts all the waters that flow into it. Theres another Chinese saying about their country which is much more modernit dates only from the fourth century. This is the saying: The tail of China is large and will not be wagged. I like that one. The British democracy approves the principles of movable party heads and unwaggable national tails. It is due to the working of these important forces that I have the honour to be addressing you at this moment.

The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.

Gross and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs.

It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.

As to conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I have not a very high opinion of that course.

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and new.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

Self-command is the main discipline.

He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself.

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

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

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.