Quotes from George Bernard Shaw

it's always the patient who has to take the chance when an experiment is necessary. And we can find out nothing without experiment.

Do not mistake your objection to defeat for an objection to fighting, your objection to being a slave for an objection to slavery, your objection to not being as rich as your neighbor for an objection to poverty. The cowardly, the insubordinate, and the envious share your objections.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. The people who get on in this world are they who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.

Postajemo mudri ne zbog toga što se prise?amo naše prošlosti, ve? što postajemo odgovorni za našu budu?nost.

UNDERSHAFT. I will not call my wife Britomart: it is not good sense.

There is no such thing as a great man or a great woman. People believe in them, just as they used to believe in unicorns and dragons. The greatest man or woman is 99 per cent just like yourself.

We should find ourselves committed to killing a great many people whom we now leave living, and to leave living a great many people whom we at present kill. We should have to get rid of all ideas about capital punishment.

When you go to women," says Nietzsche, "take your whip with you.

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.

Do not think you can frighten me by telling me I am alone. France is alone, and God is alone; and what is my loneliness before the loneliness of my country and my God? -Joan

Do not think you can frighten me by telling me I am alone. France is alone, and God is alone; and what is my loneliness before the loneliness of my country and my God? -Joan

the truth about the paradoxes of Bernard Shaw. Each of them is an argument impatiently shortened into an epigram. Each of them represents a truth hammered and hardened, with an almost disdainful violence until it is compressed into a small space, until it is made brief and almost incomprehensible.

I think that his innocence has a great deal to do with his suggestions of sexual revolution. Such a man is comparatively audacious in theory because he is comparatively clean in thought. Powerful men who have powerful passions use much of their strength in forging chains for themselves; they alone know how strong the chains need to be. But there are other souls who walk the woods like Diana, with a sort of wild chastity.

In eighteenth century France the end was at hand when men bought the Encyclopedia and found Diderot there.

At the end of the book you know Micawber, whereas you only know what has happened to David, and are not interested enough in him to wonder what his politics or religion might be if anything so stupendous as a religious or political idea, or a general idea of any sort, were to occur to him. He is tolerable as a child; but he never becomes a man, and might be left out of his own biography altogether but for his usefulness as a stage confidant

On Monday last I sat without a murmur in a stuffy theatre on a summer afternoon from three to nearly half-past 6, spellbound by Ibsen; but the price I paid for it was to find myself stricken with mortal impatience and boredom the next time I attempted to sit out the pre-Ibsenite drama for five-minutes.

If she comes, I'm not at home. If she wants anything, let her take it. If she asks for me, let her be informed that I am exceedingly old and I have totally forgotten her.

Don Juan's supernatural antagonist hurled those who refuse to repent into lakes of burning brimstone, there to be tormented by devils with horns and tails. Of that antagonist, and of that conception of repentance, how much is left that could be used in a play by me dedicated to you?

This is the true joy of life: the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clot of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

And if I am further pressed to declare straightforwardly whether I mean to disparage these authorities [who criticize Ibsen], I reply, pointedly, that I do. I affirm that such criticisms are written by men who know as much of political life as I know of navigation.

If you are to punish a man retributively, you must injure him. If you are to reform him, you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries.

Vital art comes always from a cross between art and life: art being of one sex only, and quite sterile by itself. Such a cross is always possible; for though the artist may not have the capacity to bring his art into contact with the higher life of his time; fermenting in its religion, its philosophy, its science, and its statesmanship (perhaps indeed their may not be any statesmanship going), he can at least bring it into contact with the obvious life and common passions of the streets.

MENDOZA. I am a brigand: I live by robbing the rich. TANNER. [promptly] I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor. Shake hands.

The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone: the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood.