Quotes from George Bernard Shaw

Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty; what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.

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

Once there was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time is called the Dark Ages. He who can, does. He who cannot teaches.

The only sensible person is my tailor. He measures me anew each time he sees me.

If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.

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

MIRACLES, IN THE SENSE OF PHENOMENA WE CANNOT EXPLAIN, SURROUND US ON EVERY HAND: LIFE ITSELF IS THE MIRACLE OF MIRACLES.

Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.

You don't stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor: he took my measure anew every time he saw me, whilst all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

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

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.

My religious convictions and scientific views cannot at present be more specifically defined than as those of a believer in creative evolution. I desire that no public monument or work of art or inscription or sermon or ritual service commemorating me shall suggest that I accepted the tenets peculiar to any established church or denomination nor take the form of a cross or any other instrument of torture or symbol of blood sacrifice. [ From the will of GBS ]

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

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

There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

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.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.