Quotes from Bernard Shaw

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

Malone: Me father died of starvation in Ireland in the black 47. Maybe you've heard of it. Violet: The Famine? Malone: No, the starvation. When a country is full o food, and exporting it, there can be no famine.

Tanner: My dear Tavy, your pious English habit of regarding the world as a moral gymnasium built expressly to strengthen your character in leads you to think about your own confounded principles when you should be thinking about other people's necessities.

Any man over forty is a scoundrel.

I'm willing to tell you. I'm wanting to tell you. I'm waiting to tell you.

Marriage is the most licentious of human institutions--I say the most licentious of human institutions: that is the secret of its popularity.And a woman seeking a husband is the most unscrupulous of all the beasts of prey. The confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error.

Save yourself for my sake. And I will go with you to the end of the world.

If Joan was mad, all Christendom was mad too; for people who believe devoutly in the existence of celestial personages are every whit as mad as the people who think they see them. Luther, when he threw his inkhorn at the devil, was no more mad than any other Augustinian monk: he had a more vivid imagination, and hd perhaps eaten and slept less: that was all.

My dear: in this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.

A Frenchman! Where did you pick up that expression? Are these Burgundians and Bretons and Picards and Gascons beginning to call themselves Frenchmen, just as our fellows are beginning to call themselves Englishmen? They actually talk of France and England as their countries. Theirs, if you please! What is to become of me and you if that way of thinking comes into fashion?

For now you have only Mahomet and his dupes, and the Maid and her dupes; but what will it be when every girl thinks herself a Joan and every man a Mahomet?

Thou wanton: dost thou dare call me noodle?

Il y a deux sortes de savants : les spécialistes, qui connaissent tout sur rien, et les philosophes, qui ne connaissent rien sur tout.

How can she? She's incapable of understanding anything. Besides, do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we ever do it?

What will History say? - History, sir, will lie. As always.

Apart front the things you can pick up ( the dressing and the proper way of speaking and so on), the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me like a lady and always will.

I care for life, for humanity; and you are a part of it that has come my way and been built into my house. What more can you or anyone ask?

I don't want to be good; and I don't want to be bad: I just don't want to be bothered about either good or bad: I want to be an active verb.

Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making trouble. Theres only one way of escaping trouble; and thats killing things. Cowards, you notice, are always shrieking to have troublesome people killed.

It's quite a pleasure to look at you sometimes – not now, of course, because you're crying and looking as ugly as the very devil; but when you're all right and quite yourself, you're what I should call attractive.

The process of growing from romantic boyhood into cynical maturity usually takes fifteen years. When it is compressed into fifteen minutes, the pace is too fast, and growing pains are the reult.