George Bernard Shaw

How can you dare teach a man to read until you’ve taught him everything else first?

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

Lack of money is the root of all evil.

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

What use are cartridges in battle? I always carry chocolate instead.

Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites.

You perceive I generalize with intrepidity from single instances. It is the tourist’s custom.

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: “I’m with you kid. Let’s go.”

Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

If you lose money you lose much, If you lose friends you lose more, If you lose faith you lose all.

There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right.

One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

The more you know the less you understand.

I want to be all used up when I die.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Switzerland is simply a large, lumpy, solid rock with a thin skin of grass stretched over it.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world.

Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.