Quotes from George Bernard Shaw

Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

We're human beings we are - all of us - and that's what people are liable to forget. Human beings don't like peace and goodwill and everybody loving everybody else. However much they may think they do, they don't really because they're not made like that. Human beings love eating and drinking and loving and hating. They also like showing off, grabbing all they can, fighting for their rights and bossing anybody who'll give them half a chance.

What is life but a series of inspired follies...

He who has never hoped can never despair

Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are more true: they are the only things that are true.

The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

You know well I couldn't bear to live with a low common man after you two; and it's wicked and cruel of you to insult me by pretending I could.

Nobody could stand an eternity of Heaven.

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

Oh, well, if you want original conversations, you'd better go and talk to yourself.

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.

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

Hell, they says, is paved with good intentions.

A book is like a child: it is easier to bring it into the world than to control it when it is launched there.

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

No use slaving for me and then saying you want to be cared for: who cares for a slave? If you come back, come back for the sake of good fellowship; for you'll get nothing else.

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them. That's the essence of inhumanity.

Captain Shotover: How much does your soul eat? Ellie: Oh, a lot. It eats music and pictures and books and mountains and lakes and beautiful things to wear and nice people to be with.

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language; the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

Written over the gate here are the words 'Leave every hope behind, ye who enter.' Only think what a relief that is! For what is hope? A form of moral responsibility. Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in short is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.

The quality of a play is the quality of its ideas.

All classes in proportion to their lack of travel and familiarity with foreign literature are bellicose, prejudiced against foreigners, fond of fighting as a cruel sport -- in short, dog-like in their notions of foreign policy. [Quoted in Socialism and Foreign Policy and War and the Liberal Conscience ]

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.