Quotes from George Bernard Shaw

The ultimate form of censorship is assassination.

The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.

the devil is not so black as he is painted.

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.

I say, if you hate cruelty, remember that nothing is so cruel in its consequences as the toleration of heresy!

My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself.

If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best take it out and teach it to dance.

Si usa uno specchio di vetro per guardare il viso; e si usano le opere d'arte per guardare la propria anima.

That is what all the poets do: they talk to themselves outloud and the world overhears them. But it's horribly lonely not to hear someone else talk sometimes.

It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles.

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done

The real moment of success is not the moment apparent to the crowd.

If an imaginative boy has a sufficiently rich mother who has intelligence, personal grace, dignity of character without harshness, and a cultivated sense of the best art of her time to enable her to make her house beautiful, she sets a standard for him against which very few women can struggle, besides effecting for him a disengagement of his affections, his sense of beauty, and his idealism from his specifically sexual impulses.

Making Life means making trouble

I have to live for others and not for myself: thats middle class morality.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who don't have it.

Well, what do they all amount to, these kings and captains and bishops and lawyers and such like? They just leave you in the ditch to bleed to death; and the next thing is, you meet them down there, for all the airs they give themselves.

Belief in God meant belief in the old tribal idol called Jehovah; and I would not pretend I did not know whether it existed or not.

You think, because you have a purpose, Nature must have one. You might as well expect it to have fingers and toes because you do.

I don't want to punish anybody, but there are an extraordinary number of people who I might want to kill.

Every star has its own orbit; and between it and its nearest neighbor there is not only a powerful attraction but an infinite distance. When the attraction becomes stronger than the distance the two do not embrace: they crash together in ruin.

The risks of liberty we must let everyone take; but the risks of ignorance and self-helplessness are another matter.