If you’re a big fan of personal development like me, you’ve probably heard of George Bernard Shaw. He’s quoted often given his views on politics and culture.
Best Quotes and Sayings by George Bernard Shaw
1. The goal of an artist is to create the definitive work that cannot be surpassed.
2. People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.
3. The harder I work the more I live.
4. The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.
5. We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
6. The surest way to ruin a man who doesn’t know how to handle money is to give him some.
7. Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.
8. People always get tired of one another. I grow tired of myself whenever I am left alone for ten minutes, and I am certain that I am fonder of myself than anyone can be of another person.
9. You have to choose between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the government. And, with due respect to these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold.
10. The nations morals are like its teeth, the more decayed they are the more it hurts to touch them.
11. The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.
12. Always let your flattery be seen through for what really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.
13. The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.
14. Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage — it can be delightful.
15. A thing that nobody believes cannot be proved too often.
16. No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.
17. Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.
18. Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books nobody reads.
19. I’m not a teacher: only a fellow-traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead — ahead of myself as well as you.
20. I began as a passion and ended as a habit, like all husbands.
21. People get nothing out of books but what they bring to them.
22. If you value a man’s regard, strive with him. As to liking, you like your newspaper — and despise it.
23. Kings are not born: they are made by universal hallucination.
24. The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
25. Even the youngest of us may be wrong sometimes.
26. The only service a friend can really render is to keep your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.
27. The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
28. A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
29. All great truths begin as blasphemies.
30. Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.
31. My reputation grows with every failure.
32. Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.
33. He’s a man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.
34. People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. 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.
35. We must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.
36. Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
37. It’s so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.
38. The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
39. Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.
40. I want to be all used up when I die.
41. Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.
42. Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.
43. There is no sincerer love than the love of food.
44. Experience fails to teach where there is no desire to learn.
45. You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
46. Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.
47. He who has never hoped can never despair.
48. The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.
49. Our necessities are few, but our wants are endless.
50. Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.
51. The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
52. When I was young I observed that nine out of every ten things I did were failures, so I did ten times more work.
53. The price of ability does not depend on merit, but on supply and demand.
54. Human beings are the only animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.
55. Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
56. The lack of money is the root of all evil.
57. We know there is intention and purpose in the universe, because there is intention and purpose in us.
58. Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
59. The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.
60. Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
61. The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.
62. If all the economists were laid end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion.
63. Animals are my friends… and I don’t eat my friends.
64. I have to live for others and not for myself; that’s middle class morality.
65. Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; do not outlive yourself.
66. Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty as conspicuously as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness and ugliness.
67. Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.
68. Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who looks at it when it has been in the house three days?
69. If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
70. The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.
71. My father must have had some elementary education for he could read and write and keep accounts inaccurately.
72. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it onto future generations.
73. Life is a flame that is always burning itself out, but it catches fire again every time a child is born.
74. The doctor learns that if he gets ahead of the superstitions of his patients he is a ruined man; and the result is that he instinctively takes care not to get ahead of them.
75. 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.
76. We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence…on pain of liquidation.
77. Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.
78. I am sick of reasonable people: they see all the reasons for being lazy and doing nothing.
79. People exaggerate the value of things they haven’t got: everybody worships truth and unselfishness because they have no experience with them.
80. When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth.
81. Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
82. Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.
83. Science is always simple and profound. It is only half truths that are dangerous.
84. My way of joking is telling the truth; that is the funniest joke in the world.
85. I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig, you get dirty; and besides, the pig likes it.
86. The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not a man of honor.
87. The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who haven’t got it.
88. 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.
89. Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will.
90. The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
91. Though all society is founded on intolerance, all improvement is founded on tolerance.
92. In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.
93. If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people’s opinions will rush in from all quarters.
94. Better keep yourself clean and bright. You are the window through which you must see the world.
95. The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist.
96. If all the economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.
97. In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.
98. I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.
99. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
100. Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire…
101. You cannot believe in honor until you have achieved it, better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.
