Guess quote

George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950] Irish

Rank: 4
Dramatist, Playwright

George Bernard Shaw, known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Anglo-Irish playwright, critic and polemicist whose influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond.

Life, Art, Great, Knowledge, Marriage, Communication, Courage, Experience, Failure, Family, Food, Happiness, Home, Learning, Love, Men, Power, Age, Beauty, Funny, Government, Health, History, Intelligence, Money, Patriotism, Peace, Science, Society, Sports, Success, Time, Wisdom, Women, Anniversary, Business, Car, Change, Dreams, Education, Famous, Fear, Finance, Fitness, Forgiveness, Freedom, Future, Gardening, Imagination, Independence, Legal, Music, Nature, Parenting, Politics, Religion, Sympathy, Travel, Truth, War, Work

Quote	Tags	Rank
Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.	Life	25
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.	Change	102
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.	Future, Wisdom	103
There is no sincerer love than the love of food.	Food, Love	104
A happy family is but an earlier heaven.	Family	105
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.	Communication	106
Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.		107
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.	Funny, Government	108
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.	Life	109
Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.	Science	110
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.	Government	111
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.	Life, Work	112
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.		113
I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.	Learning	114
If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people's opinions will rush in from all quarters.		115
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.	Sports	116
We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.		117
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.	Life	118
The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.		119
All great truths begin as blasphemies.	Great	120
No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious.		121
Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.	Success, Time	122
The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.		123
Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.	Food	124
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.	Experience, History, Learning	125
Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.	Great, Happiness	126
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.	Freedom, Men	201
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.	Family, Funny	202
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.		203
If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion.	Finance	204
The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.		205
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.	Happiness	206
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.	Power	207
Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open.	Anniversary, Marriage	208
Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!		209
An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.		210
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.		211
The great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life.	Great, Home	212
Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.		213
Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.		214
The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.		215
Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.	Independence	216
The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.	Courage	217
Lack of money is the root of all evil.	Money	218
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.	Art, Education, Science	219
I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.		220
I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.	Courage	221
It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.	Intelligence	222
She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.	Art, Power	223
Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.		224
Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it.		225
Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.		226
The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.		301
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.		302
Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.	Knowledge, Wisdom	303
You cannot be a hero without being a coward.		304
A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.		305
An index is a great leveller.	Great	306
You see things; and you say 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?'		307
Syllables govern the world.	Communication	308
You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.		309
You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.	Art	310
If women were particular about men's characters, they would never get married at all.	Men, Women	311
A statesman who confines himself to popular legislation - or, for the matter of that, a playwright who confines himself to popular plays - is like a blind man's dog who goes wherever the blind man pulls him, on the ground that both of them want to go to the same place.		312
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.	Communication	313
England and America are two countries separated by the same language.		314
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.	Time	315
Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.	Family	316
Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.	Art	317
Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.	Beauty, Knowledge, Truth	318
If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.		319
No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.	Religion	320
Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.	Food	321
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.		322
Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.		323
Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.	History	324
Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.	Imagination	325
Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles.		326
Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.		401
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.	Age	402
Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart's desire; the other is to get it.		403
Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?	Beauty	404
The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.		405
First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.	Love	406
I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.	Home, Travel	407
The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.		408
Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.	Experience	409
Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.	Home	410
Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.	Power	411
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.		412
I'm an atheist and I thank God for it.		413
In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it's more dangerous to lose than to win.	Knowledge	414
No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.		415
Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.	Women	416
When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.	Failure	417
The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.	Gardening	418
Most people do not pray; they only beg.		419
Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.		420
The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.	Success	421
A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.		422
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.	Patriotism	423
There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.		424
There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.	Marriage	425
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.	Marriage	426
Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.		501
What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.		502
I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.		503
The Old Testament God is a person with body parts and passions. The Church of England God has neither body, parts nor passions, and is therefore not a person.		504
Socialism never arises in the earlier phases of capitalism, as, for instance, among the pioneers of civilisation in a country where there is plenty of land available for private appropriation by the last comer.		505
All genuinely intellectual work is humorous.		506
If you're not producing as much as you consume, or perhaps a little more, then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us, and it can't be of very much use to yourself.	Society	507
If I own a large part of Scotland, I can turn the people off the land practically into the sea or across the sea. I can take women in child-bearing and throw them into the snow and leave them there. That has been done. I can do it for no better reason than I think it is better to shoot deer on the land than allow people to live on it.		508
Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.	Love	509
Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.		510
He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.		511
You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.	Fear	512
Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.	Forgiveness	513
It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.	Happiness, Peace	514
I have to live for others and not for myself: that's middle-class morality.		515
What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?	Car, Politics	516
Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.		517
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.		518
General consultant to mankind.		519
The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.	Business	520
Virtue is insufficient temptation.		521
The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.		522
Find enough clever things to say, and you're a Prime Minister; write them down and you're a Shakespeare.		523
What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?		524
Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.		525
Creation is a miracle of daily recurrence. 'A miracle a minute' would not be a bad slogan for God.		526
A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.		601
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.		602
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.	Health	603
What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.	Knowledge	604
You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.	Patriotism	605
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.	Society	606
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.		607
I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.		608
It's so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.		609
The only secrets are the secrets that keep themselves.		610
Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.		611
Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.		612
Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.		613
Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal your own.		614
The love of economy is the root of all virtue.		615
In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.		616
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.		617
Youth is wasted on the young.	Age	618
The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.		619
Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.	Fitness, Parenting	620
Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.	Peace, War	621
An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.		622
A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.		623
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.	Learning	624
Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.		625
The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.		626
Better never than late.		701
Human beings are the only animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.		702
The frontier between hell and heaven is only the difference between two ways of looking at things.		703
While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal living conditions on this earth?		704
One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.	Men	705
A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.		706
I am a Christian. That obliges me to be a Communist.		707
Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.		708
It's easier to replace a dead man than a good picture.		709
The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.		710
Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.	Dreams	711
Never fret for an only son, the idea of failure will never occur to him.	Failure	712
All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.		713
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.		714
In heaven an angel is nobody in particular.		715
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.		716
Very few people can afford to be poor.	Money	717
Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.		718
Hell is full of musical amateurs.	Music	719
The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.		720
The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.		721
Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.		722
I want to be all used up when I die.		723
We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.		724
Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.		725
Give a man health and a course to steer, and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not.	Health	726
Property is organized robbery.		801
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.		802
My reputation grows with every failure.	Failure	803
The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.		804
Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.		805
We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence... on pain of liquidation.		806
Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination.		807
There is nothing more dangerous than the conscience of a bigot.		808
The heretic is always better dead. And mortal eyes cannot distinguish the saint from the heretic.		809
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.	Life	810
The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.		811
I have a strong feeling that I shall be glad when I am dead and done for - scrapped at last to make room for somebody better, cleverer, more perfect than myself.		812
The Nazi movement is in many respects one which has my warmest sympathy.	Sympathy	813
In socialism, private property is anathema, and equal distribution of income the first consideration. In capitalism, private property is cardinal, and distribution left to ensue from the play of free contract and selfish interest on that basis, no matter what anomalies it may present.		814
You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.		815
Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.	Nature	816
The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.		817
When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn't got any.		818
Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.		819
We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.		820
Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.		821
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.		822
Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.	Sports	823
Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes.		824
Socialism is the same as Communism, only better English.		825
Caesar was a man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.	Courage	826
We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.	Experience	901
Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn't really hurt.		902
Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.		903
The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.		904
People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.		905
Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.		906
If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn't be anything for us to do.		907
I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.	Intelligence	908
Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.	Marriage	909
Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.		910
We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.		911
Martyrdom: The only way a man can become famous without ability.	Famous	912
It is most unwise for people in love to marry.		913
If you injure your neighbour, better not do it by halves.		914
Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability.		915
A man who has no office to go, to I don't care who he is, is a trial of which you can have no conception.		916
If I were a woman, I'd simply refuse to speak to any man or do anything for men until I'd got the vote.		917
I want to destroy ownership in order that possession and enjoyment may be raised to the highest point in every section of the community.		918
What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.		919
The only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man.		920
Socialism, reduced to its simplest legal and practical expression, means the complete discarding of the institution of private property by transforming it into public property, and the division of the resultant public income equally and indiscriminately among the entire population.	Legal	921
My method of getting a play across the footlights is like a revolver shooting: every line has a bullet in it and comes with an explosion.		922
If a woman can, by careful selection of a father and nourishment of herself, produce a citizen with efficient senses, sound organs and a good digestion, she should clearly be secured a sufficient reward for that natural service to make her willing to undertake and repeat it.		923
The idea of personal salvation is intensely repugnant to me when it is not absurd. Imagine Roosevelt, the big brute, preserving his personality in a future state and swaggering about as a celestial Rough Rider!		924

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