Quotes by Shaw, George Bernard

"Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich, something for nothing."

Shaw, George Bernard on gambling   

"The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there."

Shaw, George Bernard on gardening and gardens   

"It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date."

Shaw, George Bernard on generations   

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"Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same."

Shaw, George Bernard on giving   

"Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world."

Shaw, George Bernard on age and aging
4 fans of this quote   

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"Every man over forty is a scoundrel."

Shaw, George Bernard on age and aging   

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"I'm only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler."

Shaw, George Bernard on alcohol and alcoholism   

"Life would be tolerable but for its amusements."

Shaw, George Bernard on amusement   

"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."

Shaw, George Bernard on anarchism
3 fans of this quote   

"Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree."

Shaw, George Bernard on ancestry   

"To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching Man to regard himself as an experiment in the realization of God, to regard his hands as God's hand, his brain as God's brain, his purpose as God's purpose. He must regard God as a helpless Longing, which longed him into existence by its desperate need for an executive organ."

Shaw, George Bernard on god
3 fans of this quote   

"The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business."

Shaw, George Bernard on gossip   

"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."

Shaw, George Bernard on government   

"Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion. When they refuse to be governed by law or persuasion, they have to be governed by force or fraud, or both."

Shaw, George Bernard on government   

"You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking and getting well hammered yourself."

Shaw, George Bernard on growth
4 fans of this quote   

"Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannot endure it. Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life."

Shaw, George Bernard on happiness   

"We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it."

Shaw, George Bernard on happiness   

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

Shaw, George Bernard on happiness   

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"Give a man health and a course to steer; and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not."

Shaw, George Bernard on happiness   

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"Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated."

Shaw, George Bernard on hatred
3 fans of this quote   

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"Of all the anti-social vested interests the worst is the vested interest in ill-health."

Shaw, George Bernard on health   

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"It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace."

Shaw, George Bernard on art
8 fans of this quote   

"A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income."

Shaw, George Bernard on art   

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"A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell."

Shaw, George Bernard on hell
4 fans of this quote   

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"Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in short, is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself."

Shaw, George Bernard on hell
3 fans of this quote   

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"You cannot be a hero without being a coward."

Shaw, George Bernard on heroes and heroism
4 fans of this quote   

"We must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy."

Shaw, George Bernard on honesty   

"He who has never hoped can never despair."

Shaw, George Bernard on hope
5 fans of this quote   

"Go anywhere in England where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and really nice English people; and what do you always find? That the stables are the real center of the household."

Shaw, George Bernard on horses   

"There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough."

Shaw, George Bernard on nature   

"Human beings are the only animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid."

Shaw, George Bernard on humankind   

"Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and calves and that men and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock."

Shaw, George Bernard on humankind   

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"When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity."

Shaw, George Bernard on hunting   

"I tell you that as long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it."

Shaw, George Bernard on ideas   

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"The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone: the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood."

Shaw, George Bernard on idols   

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will."

Shaw, George Bernard on imagination
5 fans of this quote   

"As long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it."

Shaw, George Bernard on improvement   

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"The worst sin... is... to be indifferent."

Shaw, George Bernard on indifference
3 fans of this quote   

"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity."

Shaw, George Bernard on indifference
10 fans of this quote   

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"Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones. All men mean well."

Shaw, George Bernard on intentions