Quotes from George Bernard Shaw

For of course if nobody agrees with you, how are you to know youre not a fool?

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.

I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance.

We should find ourselves committed to killing a great many people whom we now leave living... A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people's time to look after them.

Don't wait for the right opportunity: create it.

men never really overcome fear until they imagine they are fighting to further a universal purpose—fighting for an idea, as they call it. Why was the Crusader braver than the pirate? Because he fought, not for himself, but for the Cross.

It is positively because he is quick-witted that he is long-winded.

People see a Macbeth film. They imagine they have seen Macbeth, and don't want to see it again; so when your Mr. Hackett or somebody comes round to act the play, he finds the house empty. That is what has happened to dozens of good plays whose authors have allowed them to be filmed. It shall not happen to mine if I can help it.

I'm glad he's hungry. Not that I want him to suffer, poor chap! But then he'll enjoy eating me much more. There's a cheerful side to everything.

The notion that persons should be safe from extermination as long as they do not commit willful murder, or levy war against the Crown, or kidnap, or throw vitriol, is not only to limit social responsibility unnecessarily, and to privilege the large range of intolerable misconduct that lies outside them, but to divert attention from the essential justification for extermination, which is always incorrigible social incompatibility and nothing else.

Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal.

When we want to read of the deeds that are done for love, wither do we turn? To the murder column; and there we are rarely disappointed.

I believe if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring much needed peace and happiness. I have studied him - the man and in my opinion is far from being an anti–Christ. He must be called the Savior of Humanity. I have prophesied about the faith of Mohammad that it would be acceptable the Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today.

Pickering : You see, lots of the real people can't do it at all: they're such fools that they think style comes by nature to people in their position; and so they never learn. There's always something professional about doing a thing superlatively well. HIGGINS. Yes: that's what drives me mad: the silly people don't know their own silly business.

Weak people want to marry strong people who do not frighten them too much; and this often leads them to make the mistake we describe metaphorically as "biting off more than they can chew.

What they think they ought to think is bad enough, Lord knows; but what they really think would break up the whole show. Do you suppose it would be really agreeable if I were to come out now with what I really think?

It may be asked how so imbecile and dangerous a creed ever came to be accepted by intelligent beings. I will answer that question more fully in my next volume of plays, which will be entirely devoted to the subject. For

think men make more mistakes by being too clever than by being too good

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

Construction cumbers the ground with institutions made by busybodies. Destruction clears it and gives us breathing space and liberty.

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.

Our language is the language of Shakespeare, Thompson and Milton, as we sit and croon like bilious pigeons.

Reasonable men adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable men adapt the world to themselves. That´s why all progress depends on unreasonable men.

Civilized society is one huge bourgeoisie: no nobleman dares now shock his greengrocer.