Quotes by Shaw, George Bernard

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

Shaw, George Bernard on books - reading   

"Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books nobody reads."

Shaw, George Bernard on censorship
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"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."

Shaw, George Bernard on change
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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

Shaw, George Bernard on change
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"A man of great common sense and good taste -- meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage."

Shaw, George Bernard on taste   

"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."

Shaw, George Bernard on taxes and taxation   

"What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child."

Shaw, George Bernard on teacher
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"He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches."

Shaw, George Bernard on teacher
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"I was a freethinker before I knew how to think."

Shaw, George Bernard on thoughts and thinking
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"Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself thinking once or twice a week."

Shaw, George Bernard on thoughts and thinking   

"It is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to think otherwise than in the fashion of their own period."

Shaw, George Bernard on thoughts and thinking   

"No king on earth is as safe in his job as a Trade Union official. There is only one thing that can get him sacked; and that is drink. Not even that, as long as he doesn't actually fall down."

Shaw, George Bernard on trade unions   

"There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it."

Shaw, George Bernard on tragedies
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"Life on board a pleasure steamer violates every moral and physical condition of healthy life except fresh air. It is a guzzling, lounging, gambling, dog's life. The only alternative to excitement is irritability."

Shaw, George Bernard on travel   

"Though I can make my extravaganzas appear credible, I cannot make the truth appear so."

Shaw, George Bernard on truth   

"All great truths begin as blasphemies."

Shaw, George Bernard on truth
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This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"A man who has no office to go to -- I don't care who he is -- is a trial of which you can have no conception."

Shaw, George Bernard on unemployment   

"The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation."

Shaw, George Bernard on happiness
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"A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses."

Shaw, George Bernard on vegetarianism   

"When it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones."

Shaw, George Bernard on villains   

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"If you strike a child, take care that you strike it in anger, even at the risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neither can nor should be forgiven."

Shaw, George Bernard on violence   

"Better keep yourself clean and bright. You are the window through which you must see the world."

Shaw, George Bernard on virtue   

"Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it."

Shaw, George Bernard on virtue   

"What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?"

Shaw, George Bernard on virtue   

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"Some men see things as they are and say, Why? I of dream things that never were, and say, Why not?"

Shaw, George Bernard on vision
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"Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."

Shaw, George Bernard on voting
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"In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence, and famine."

Shaw, George Bernard on war   

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"The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them."

Shaw, George Bernard on wisdom   

"This comes of James teaching me to think for myself, and never to hold back out of fear of what other people may think of me. It works beautifully as long as I think the same things as he does."

Shaw, George Bernard on wives   

"The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her."

Shaw, George Bernard on women   

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"Nothing makes a man so selfish as work."

Shaw, George Bernard on work   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"When I was a young man I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. I didn't want to be a failure, so I did ten times more work."

Shaw, George Bernard on work   

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

Shaw, George Bernard on writers and writing   

"You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living."

Shaw, George Bernard on writers and writing   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing."

Shaw, George Bernard on youth   

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

Shaw, George Bernard on youth   

"Even the youngest of us may be wrong sometimes."

Shaw, George Bernard on youth   

"Youth is such a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children."

Shaw, George Bernard on youth
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"The early Christian rules of life were not made to last, because the early Christians did not believe that the world itself was going to last."

Shaw, George Bernard on christians and christianity   

"We sing in a church, why can we not dance there?"

Shaw, George Bernard on churches