Quotes by Shaw, George Bernard

"The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is."

Shaw, George Bernard on morality   

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"He never does a proper thing without giving an improper reason for it."

Shaw, George Bernard on motives   

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"Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned."

Shaw, George Bernard on music   

"Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him."

Shaw, George Bernard on nationalities and nationalism   

"I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could."

Shaw, George Bernard on nations   

"The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them."

Shaw, George Bernard on opportunity
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"Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites."

Shaw, George Bernard on parasites   

"You will never have a quiet world until you knock the patriotism out of the human race."

Shaw, George Bernard on patriotism   

"Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy."

Shaw, George Bernard on patriotism   

"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."

Shaw, George Bernard on patriotism   

"Better see rightly on a pound a week than squint on a million."

Shaw, George Bernard on payment   

"Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous"

Shaw, George Bernard on peace   

"If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn't be anything for us to do."

Shaw, George Bernard on perfection   

"A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself."

Shaw, George Bernard on pessimism   

"The philosopher is Nature's pilot. And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer."

Shaw, George Bernard on philosophers and philosophy   

"The camera can represent flesh so superbly that, if I dared, I would never photograph a figure without asking that figure to take its clothes off."

Shaw, George Bernard on photography   

"My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity."

Shaw, George Bernard on plays   

"In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice."

Shaw, George Bernard on plays   

"Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort."

Shaw, George Bernard on art   

"Assassination is the extreme form of censorship."

Shaw, George Bernard on assassination   

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"I'm an atheist and I thank God for it."

Shaw, George Bernard on atheism
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"In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it's more dangerous to lose than to win."

Shaw, George Bernard on battles   

"We mustn't be stiff and stand-off, you know. We must be thoroughly democratic, and patronize everybody without distinction of class."

Shaw, George Bernard on politics   

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"He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career."

Shaw, George Bernard on politics   

"The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist."

Shaw, George Bernard on population
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"The seven deadly sins... food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted."

Shaw, George Bernard on poverty and the poor   

"The greatest evils and the worst of crimes is poverty; our first duty, a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor."

Shaw, George Bernard on poverty and the poor   

"You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes."

Shaw, George Bernard on power
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"Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power."

Shaw, George Bernard on power
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"Common people do not pray; they only beg."

Shaw, George Bernard on prayer   

"The most anxious man in a prison is the governor."

Shaw, George Bernard on prison   

"All problems are finally scientific problems."

Shaw, George Bernard on problems   

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"All professions are conspiracies against the laity."

Shaw, George Bernard on professions and professionals   

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"All progress means war with society."

Shaw, George Bernard on progress   

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"All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions."

Shaw, George Bernard on progress   

"Property is organized robbery."

Shaw, George Bernard on property   

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"It has taken me nearly twenty years of studied self-restraint, aided by the natural decay of my faculties, to make myself dull enough to be accepted as a serious person by the British public; and I am not sure that I am not still regarded as a suspicious character in some quarters."

Shaw, George Bernard on public   

"Better never than late."

Shaw, George Bernard on punctuality   

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"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."

Shaw, George Bernard on purpose   

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"We know there is intention and purpose in the universe, because there is intention and purpose in us."

Shaw, George Bernard on purpose