Quotes by Shaw, George Bernard

"The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel."

Shaw, George Bernard on quarrels
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"No question is so difficult to answer as that which the answer is obvious."

Shaw, George Bernard on questions
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"I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation."

Shaw, George Bernard on quotations
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"Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man."

Shaw, George Bernard on reason
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"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people."

Shaw, George Bernard on reason   

"There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it."

Shaw, George Bernard on religion   

"My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion."

Shaw, George Bernard on religion   

"All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of story-tellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain."

Shaw, George Bernard on religion   

"My reputation grew with every failure."

Shaw, George Bernard on reputation
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"Well, dearie, men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability. But you can't blame them for that, can you?"

Shaw, George Bernard on respectability   

"I feel nothing but the accursed happiness I have dreaded all my life long: the happiness that comes as life goes, the happiness of yielding and dreaming instead of resisting and doing, the sweetness of the fruit that is going rotten."

Shaw, George Bernard on retirement   

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"Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder."

Shaw, George Bernard on evolution   

"What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness."

Shaw, George Bernard on riches   

"The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine."

Shaw, George Bernard on riches   

"The golden rule is that there are no golden rules."

Shaw, George Bernard on right and rightness   

"Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation."

Shaw, George Bernard on royalty   

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"An asylum for the sane would be empty in America."

Shaw, George Bernard on sanity
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"Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal."

Shaw, George Bernard on science   

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"Science is always wrong, it never solves a problem without creating ten more."

Shaw, George Bernard on science   

"There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses."

Shaw, George Bernard on secrets   

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"It is easy -- terribly easy -- to shake a man's faith in himself. To take advantage of that to break a man's spirit is devil's work."

Shaw, George Bernard on self-confidence
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"A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most. On Other Peoples Expectations: The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor; he took my measurement anew every time he saw me, while all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me."

Shaw, George Bernard on self-conflict
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"Self-denial is not a virtue, it is only the effect of prudence on rascality."

Shaw, George Bernard on self-denial   

"Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing."

Shaw, George Bernard on sacrifice   

"Ladies and gentleman are permitted to have friends in the kennel, but not in the kitchen."

Shaw, George Bernard on servants   

"We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins."

Shaw, George Bernard on shame   

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"Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn."

Shaw, George Bernard on silence   

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"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid."

Shaw, George Bernard on sincerity   

"A nap, my friend, is a brief period of sleep which overtakes superannuated persons when they endeavor to entertain unwelcome visitors or to listen to scientific lectures."

Shaw, George Bernard on sleep   

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"When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them."

Shaw, George Bernard on song and singing   

"We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies."

Shaw, George Bernard on soul   

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"I don't want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady."

Shaw, George Bernard on speech   

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"Success covers a multitude of blunders."

Shaw, George Bernard on success
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"I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind."

Shaw, George Bernard on success   

"Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability."

Shaw, George Bernard on ability   

"Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me."

Shaw, George Bernard on acting and actors   

"Beauty is all very well at first sight; but whoever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?"

Shaw, George Bernard on beauty
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"In your Salvation shelter I saw poverty, misery, cold and hunger. You gave them bread and treacle and dreams of heaven. I give from thirty shillings a week to twelve thousand a year. They find their own dreams; but I look after the drainage."

Shaw, George Bernard on benefactors   

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"Don't order any black things. Rejoice in his memory; and be radiant: leave grief to the children. Wear violet and purple. Be patient with the poor people who will snivel: they don't know; and they think they will live for ever, which makes death a division instead of a bond."

Shaw, George Bernard on bereavement   

"You are all fundamentalists with a top dressing of science. That is why you are the stupidest of conservatives and reactionists in politics and the most bigoted of obstructionists in science itself. When it comes to getting a move on you are all of the same opinion: stop it, flog it, hang it, dynamite it, stamp it out."

Shaw, George Bernard on bigotry