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George Bernard Shaw Quotes (1856-1950)
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About George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 β 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist with a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory. He wrote more than sixty plays, including such works as Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1913) and Saint Joan (1923). Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925.
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful George Bernard Shaw quotes.
βHappiness and Beauty are by-products.β
βWhy was I born with such contemporaries?β
βGod is on the side of the big battalions.β
βScratch an Englishman and find a Protestant.β
βDecency is Indecency's Conspiracy of Silence.β
βAll professions are conspiracies against the laity.β
βThose who understand evil pardon it.β
βWhere equality is undisputed, so also is subordination.β
βAll great truths begin as blasphemies.β
βA perpetual holiday is a good working definition of Hell.β
βLiberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.β
βThe secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing.β
βWhat really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.β
βBreakages, Limited, the biggest industrial corporation in the country.β
βI'm only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler. I don't like beer.β
βObedience simulates subordination as fear of the police simulates honesty.β
βNo man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.β
βI have to live for others and not for myself; that's middle-class morality.β
βSelf-denial is not a virtue: it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.β
βConsistency is the enemy of enterprise, just as symmetry is the enemy of art.β
βDancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.β
βChloroform has done a lot of mischief. It's enabled every fool to be a surgeon.β
βRiches and Art are spurious receipts for the production of Happiness and Beauty.β
βPolitical necessities sometimes turn out to be political mistakes.β
βYou'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.β
βThe only time my education was interrupted was when I was in school.β
βNo elaboration of physical or moral accomplishment can atone for the sin of parasitism.β
βImpression of Gandhi! You might as well ask one to give his impression of the Himalayas.β
βAh-ah-ah-ah-ow-ow-oo-oo!!! I ain't dirty: I washed me face and hands afore I come, I did!β
βMust then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?β
βDemocracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.β
βHome life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.β
βWhat Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?β
βJournalists are too poorly paid in this country to know anything that is fit for publication.β
βAs long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.β
βA fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry.β
βIn an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.β
βHe knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.β
βI never resist temptation because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.β
βThe novelties of one generation are only the resuscitated fashions of the generation before last.β
βUndershaft: My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.β
βAll very fine, Mary; but my old-fashioned common sense is better than your clever modern nonsense.β
β"He must be greatly changed. Has he attained the seventh degree of concentration?"β
βA government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.β
βThe fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.β
βLove is an appetite which, like all other appetites, is destroyed for the moment by its gratification.β
βNo man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it well, ever loses his self-respect.β
βThe road to ignorance is paved with good editions. Only the illiterate can afford to buy good books now.β
βI ask you, what am I? I'm one of the undeserving poor: thats what I am. Think of what that means to a man.β
βIt is not necessary to replace a guillotined criminal: it is necessary to replace a guillotined social system.β
βIt is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.β
βTo understand a saint, you must hear the devil's advocate; and the same is true of the artist.β
βIt is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to think otherwise than in the fashion of their own period.β
βThe way to deal with worldly people is to frighten them by repeating their scandalous whisperings aloud.β
βYouth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.β
βPatriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it...β
βNothing is more dreadful than a husband who keeps telling you everything he thinks, and always wants to know what you think.β
βIndependence? That's middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.β
βThe confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error.β
βThat proves it's not by Shaw, because all Shaw's characters are himself: mere puppets stuck up to spout Shaw.β
βWhen a heretic wishes to avoid martyrdom he speaks of "Orthodoxy, True and False" and demonstrates that the True is his heresy.β
βThere are some men who are considered quite ugly, but who are more remarkable than pretty people. You often see that in artists.β
βOptimistic lies have such immense therapeutic value that a doctor who cannot tell them convincingly has mistaken his profession.β
βHe who confuses political liberty with freedom and political equality with similarity has never thought for five minutes about either.β
βWomen upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another.β
βIf you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself.β
βAssassination is the extreme form of censorship; and it seems hard to justify an incitement to it on anti-censorial principles.β
βComposers are not human; They can live on diminished sevenths, and be contented with a pianoforte for a wife, and a string quartet for a family.β
βThe worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.β
βI was a cannibal for twenty-five years. For the rest I have been a vegetarian. It was Shelley who first opened my eyes to the savagery of my diet.β
βEvery fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his credulity science or morality as confidently as his father called it divine revelation.β
βWhat is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn't come every day.β
βThe salvation of the world depends on the men who will not take evil good-humouredly, and whose laughter destroys the fool instead of encouraging him.β
βYou 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.β
βWe should refuse to tolerate poverty as a social institution not because the poor are the salt of the earth, but because 'the poor in a lump are bad'.β
βRevolutionary movements attract those who are not good enough for established institutions as well as those who are too good for them.β
βDisobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.β
βThe roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown.β
βThe first prison I ever saw had inscribed on it cease to do evil: learn to do well; but as the inscription was on the outside, the prisoners could not read it.β
βI appeal to the chemists to discover a humane gas that will kill instantly and painlessly. In short, a gentlemanly gas β deadly by all means, but humane not cruel.β
βThe duke inquires contemptuously whether his gamekeeper is the equal of the Astronomer Royal; but he insists that they shall both be hanged equally if they murder him.β
βI exclude the hypothesis of complete originality on [Charles] Lever's part, because a man can no more be completely original in that sense than a tree can grow out of air.β
βThe only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.β
βPasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it...β
βThe sex relation is not a personal relation. It can be irresistibly desired and rapturously consummated between persons who could not endure one another for a day in any other relation.β
βMen are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience. If we could learn from mere experience, the stones of London would be wiser than its wisest men.β
βSome of the things Mussolini has done, and some that he is threatening to do go further in the direction of Socialism than the English Labour Party could yet venture if they were in power.β
βThe reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.β
βA healthy nation is as unconscious of its nationality as a healthy man of his bones. But if you break a nation's nationality it will think of nothing else but getting it set again.β
βPlato long ago pointed out the importance of being governed by men with sufficient sense of responsibility and comprehension of public duties to be very reluctant to undertake the work of governing.β
βWhen will we realize that the fact that we can become accustomed to anything, however disgusting at first, makes it necessary to examine carefully everything we have become accustomed to.β
βNo age or condition is without its heroes. The least incapable general in a nation is its CΓ¦sar, the least imbecile statesman its Solon, the least confused thinker its Socrates, the least commonplace poet its Shakespeare.β
βPeople are always blaming circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. 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.β
βA critic recently described me, with deadly acuteness, as having 'a kindly dislike of my fellow-creatures.' Perhaps dread would have been nearer the mark than dislike; for man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.β
βYou 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.β
β'''Just as the liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe any one else; so a guilty society can more easily be persuaded that any apparently innocent act is guilty than that any apparently guilty act is innocent.β
βWhen two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.β
βIt is not the sale of my soul that troubles me: I have sold it too often to care about that. I have sold it for a professorship. I have sold it for an income. ... What is all human conduct but the daily and hourly sale of our souls for trifles?β
βSocialists must be in favor of an aristocratic form of government. We must have the best men for the job . . . In the dictator you must have a man who has not only the power to govern but the force of character to impose himself as dictator whether you like him or not.β
βWhy should you call me to account for eating decently? If I battened on the scorched corpses of animals, you might well ask me why I did that. Why should I be filthy and inhuman? Why should I be an accomplice in the wholesale horror and degradation of the slaughter-house?β
βHitler is a very remarkable man, a very able man... What Hitler should have done was not to drive the Jews out, what he ought to have said was, 'I will tolerate the Jews to any extent on condition that no Jew marries a Jewess, on condition that he marries a German.'β
βDo 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.β
βProgress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. Creeds, articles, and institutes of religious faith ossify our brains and make change impossible. As such they are nuisances, and in practice have to be mostly ignored.β
βMussolini, Kemal, Pilsudski, Hitler and the rest can all depend on me to judge them by their ability to deliver the goods and not by... comfortable notions of freedom. Stalin has delivered the goods to an extent that seemed impossible ten years ago; and I take off my hat to him accordingly.β
βWell, I tell you again to get rid of your Constitution. But I suppose you won't do it. You have a good president and you have a bad Constitution, and the bad Constitution gets the better of the good President all the time. The end of it will be is that you might as well have an English Prime Minister.β
βThis craving for bouquets by Jews is a symptom of racial degeneration. The Jews are worse than my own people. Those Jews who still want to be the chosen race (chosen by the late Lord Balfour) can go to Palestine and stew in their own juice. The rest had better stop being Jews and start being human beings.β
βWe ought to tackle the Jewish question by admitting the right of States to make eugenic experiments by weeding out any strains that they think undesirable, but insisting that they should do it as humanely as they can afford to, and not shock civilization by such misdemeanors as the expulsion and robbery of Einstein.β
βThe man who has graduated from the flogging block at Eton to the bench from which he sentences the garrotter to be flogged is the same social product as the garrotter who has been kicked by his father and cuffed by his mother until he has grown strong enough to throttle and rob the rich citizen whose money he desires.β
βGeniuses are horrid, intolerant, easily offended, sleeplessly self-conscious men, who expect their wives to be angels with no further business in life than to pet and worship their husbands. Even at the best they are not comfortable men to live with; and a perfect husband is one who is perfectly comfortable to live with.β
βOur natural dispositions may be good; but we have been badly brought up, and are full of anti-social personal ambitions and prejudices and snobberies. Had we not better teach our children to be better citizens than ourselves? We are not doing that at present. The Russians are. That is my last word. Think over it.β
βPerhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family. But here again, because there is nothing to sell, there is a very general disposition to regard a married woman's work as no work at all, and to take it as a matter of course that she should not be paid for it.β
βThe secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active, which is pleasanter than any happiness until you are tired of it.β
βThis is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.β
βI happen, like Napoleon, to prefer Mohammedanism. [Mrs George, associating Mohammedanism with polygamy, looks at him with quick suspicion]. I believe the whole British Empire will adopt a reformed Mohammedanism before the end of the century. The character of Mahomet is congenial to me. I admire him, and share his views of life to a considerable extent.β
βUnder Socialism, you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you liked it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live, you would have to live well.β
βUntil you have socialism you will never have State solidity, because, as we know, if you have private property you will immediately split your stake. You get the class conflict, the class struggle, the confrontation of interests between the proprietors and between the proletariat; and, therefore, you have something that is crumbling, that is divided against itself.β
βEngland and America are two countries divided [separated] by a common [the same] language. (attributed to Shaw despite not appearing in his writings, see Oxford Dictionary of Quotations [4th edn., p. 638, quote no. 31]. See also Esar & Bentley, 1951, Treasury of Humorous Quotations; earlier attributed to Shaw in the Reader's Digest, November 1942.)β
βHail, Sphinx: salutation from Julius Caesar! I have wandered in many lands, seeking the lost regions from which my birth into this world exiled me, and the company of creatures such as I myself. I have found flocks and pastures, men and cities, but no other Caesar, no air native to me, no man kindred to me, none who can do my day's deed, and think my night's thought.β
βIf you leave your art, the world will beat you back to it. The world has not an ambition worth sharing, or a prize worth handling. Corrupt successes, disgraceful failures, or sheeplike vegetation are all it has to offer. I prefer Art, which gives me a sixth sense of beauty, with self-respect: perhaps also an immortal reputation in return for honest endeavour in a labour of love.β
βThe epithet beautiful is used by surgeons to describe operations which their patients describe as ghastly, by physicists to describe methods of measurement which leave sentimentalists cold, by lawyers to describe cases which ruin all the parties to them, and by lovers to describe the objects of their infatuation, however unattractive they may appear to the unaffected spectators.β
βStalin has exiled Trotsky and become the Pontifex Maximus of the new Russo-Catholic Church of Communism on two grounds. First, he is a practical Nationalist statesman recognizing that Russia is a big enough handful for mortal rulers to tackle without taking on the rest of the world as well.... Second, Stalin, inflexible as to his final aim, is a compete opportunist as to the means.β
βWomen are not angels. They are as foolish as men in many ways; but they have had to devote themselves to life whilst men have had to devote themselves to death; and that makes a vital difference in male and female religion. Women have been forced to fear whilst men have been forced to dare: the heroism of a woman is to nurse and protect life, and of a man to destroy it and court death.β
βThen the first man who had the gumption to see that we might get up on our legs and defy all those old treaties, he would be the most popular man in England. There can be no peace in the world until there is peace between England, France, Germany, Russia, the United States and all the big powers of the West. Now take that home and think about it and don't be frightened any more about the Germans.β
βHowbeit, Paul succeeded in stealing the image of Christ crucified for the figure-head of his Salvationist vessel, with its Adam posing as the natural man, its doctrine of original sin, and its damnation avoidable only by faith in the sacrifice of the cross. In fact, no sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus.β
βI delight in the war more & more. It has waked up the country out of its filthy wallowing in money (blood is a far superior bath); and it has put a fourpence on the Income Tax which will never come off it if the Fabian can help it; so that Old Age Pensions will be within reach at the end of the ten years repayment period, if not sooner. ... Charrington calls me a Tory because I declare for Imperialism as our social theory.β
βIt is quite useless to declare that all men are born free if you deny that they are born good. Guarantee a man's goodness and his liberty will take care of itself. To guarantee his freedom on condition that you approve of his moral character is formally to abolish all freedom whatsoever, as every man's liberty is at the mercy of a moral indictment which any fool can trump up against everyone who violates custom, whether as a prophet or as a rascal.β
βHe [the British taxpayer] must be taught that war is not precise or economical. It is almost inconceivably wasteful and extravagant. It burns the house to roast the pig, and even then seldom roasts him effectively..... waste is the law of modern war; and nothing is cheap on the battlefield except the lives of men...... Therefore, my taxpayer, resign yourself to this: that we may fight bravely, fight hard, fight long, fight cunningly, fight recklessly, fight in a hundred and fifty ways, but we cannot fight cheaply.β
βNow take Stalin himself. He is 'neither duke nor peer', not a king, not a chancellor, not a dictator, not a Prime Minister, not an archbishop, not entitled to salutes enforced by youths in coloured shirts, but simply secretary of the supreme controlling organ of the hierarchy, subject to dismissal at five minutes' notice if he does not give satisfaction. This position he has attained through the survival of the fittest, and has held through the years of the most appalling vicissitudes that ever attended the birth pangs of a new civilisation.β
βDear Katharine Cornell: I don't think I was ever so astonished by a picture as I was by your photograph. Your success as Candida and something blonde and expansive about your name had created an ideal British Candida in my imagination. Fancy my feelings on seeing the photograph of a gorgeous dark lady from the cradle of the human race ... wherever that was ... Ceylon ... Sumatra ... Hilo ... or the southernmost corner of the Garden of Eden. If you look like that it doesn't matter a rap if you can act or not. Can you? Yours, breath bereaved, Bernard Shaw.β
βUndershaft: You have made for yourself something that you call a morality or a religion or what not. It doesn't fit the facts. Well, scrap it. Scrap it and get one that does fit. That is what is wrong with the world at present. It scraps its obsolete steam engines and dynamos; but it wont scrap its old prejudices and its old moralities and its old religions and its old political constitutions. Whats the result? In machinery it does very well; but in morals and religion and politics it is working at a loss that brings it nearer bankruptcy every year.β
βThe moment we face it frankly we are driven to the conclusion that the community has a right to put a price on the right to live in it ... If people are fit to live, let them live under decent human conditions. If they are not fit to live, kill them in a decent human way. Is it any wonder that some of us are driven to prescribe the lethal chamber as the solution for the hard cases which are at present made the excuse for dragging all the other cases down to their level, and the only solution that will create a sense of full social responsibility in modern populations?β
βYou are so careful of your boy's morals, knowing how troublesome they may be, that you keep him away from the Venus of Milo only to find him in the arms of the scullery maid or someone much worse. You decide that the Hermes of Praxiteles and Wagner's Tristan are not suited for young girls; and your daughter marries somebody appallingly unlike either Hermes or Tristan solely to escape from your parental protection. You have not stifled a single passion nor averted a single danger: you have depraved the passions by starving them, and broken down all the defences which so effectively protect children brought up in freedom.β
βSociety, with all its prisons and bayonets and whips and ostracisms and starvations, is powerless in the face of the Anarchist who is prepared to sacrifice his own life in the battle with it. Our natural safety from the cheap and devastating explosives which every Russian student can make ... lies in the fact that brave and resolute men, when they are rascals, will not risk their skins for the good of humanity, and, when they are sympathetic enough to care for humanity, abhor murder, and never commit it until their consciences are outraged beyond endurance. The remedy is, then, simply not to outrage their consciences.β
βAgain, there is the illusion of "increased command over Nature," meaning that cotton is cheap and that ten miles of country road on a bicycle have replaced four on foot. But even if man's increased command over Nature included any increased command over himself (the only sort of command relevant to his evolution into a higher being), the fact remains that it is only by running away from the increased command over Nature to country places where Nature is still in primitive command over Man that he can recover from the effects of the smoke, the stench, the foul air, the overcrowding, the racket, the ugliness, the dirt which the cheap cotton costs us.β
βTheodotus: Caesar: you are a stranger here, and not conversant with our laws. The kings and queens of Egypt may not marry except with their own royal blood. Ptolemy and Cleopatra are born king and consort just as they are born brother and sister.
Britannus (shocked): Caesar: this is not proper.
Theodotus (outraged): How!
Caesar (recovering his self-possession): Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.β
Britannus (shocked): Caesar: this is not proper.
Theodotus (outraged): How!
Caesar (recovering his self-possession): Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.β
βWe have to confess it: Capitalist mankind in the lump is detestable. ...Both rich and poor are really hateful in themselves. For my part I hate the poor and look forward eagerly to their extermination. I pity the rich a little, but am equally bent on their extermination. The working classes, the ruling classes, the professional classes, the propertied classes, the ruling classes, are each more odious than the other: they have no right to live: I should despair if I did not know that they will all die presently, and that there is no need on earth why they should be replaced by people like themselves... And yet I am not in the least a misanthrope. I am a person of normal affectionsβ
βThe news from Germany is the very best news that we have had since the war. Ever since 1918 we, like all the other powers, have been behaving just as badly as we possibly could. Well now, when Germany fell, they want and they sat on Germany's head and they kept sitting on Germany's head, although it was quite preposterous, quite evident to any sensible persona, that they couldn't go on like that forever. Then there came a very intelligent gentleman named Adolf Hitler and he, knowing perfectly well that the powers would not fight, he snapped his fingers at the Treaty of Versailles. Just exactly as if we in England had been in the same position. As if the powers had beaten us and sat on our head.β
βReligion is a great force β the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows don't understand is that you must get at a man through his own religion and not through yours. Instead of facing that fact, you persist in trying to convert all men to your own little sect, so that you can use it against them afterwards. You are all missionaries and proselytizers trying to uproot the native religion from your neighbor's flowerbeds and plant your own in its place. You would rather let a child perish in ignorance than have it taught by a rival sectary. You can talk to me of the quintessential equality of coal merchants and British officers; and yet you can't see the quintessential equality of all the religions.β
βThere is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage. If the mischief stopped at talking and thinking it would be bad enough; but it goes further, into disastrous anarchical action. Because our marriage law is inhuman and unreasonable to the point of downright abomination, the bolder and more rebellious spirits form illicit unions, defiantly sending cards round to their friends announcing what they have done. Young women come to me and ask me whether I think they ought to consent to marry the man they have decided to live with; and they are perplexed and astonished when I, who am supposed (heaven knows why!) to have the most advanced views attainable on the subject, urge them on no account to compromise themselves without the security of an authentic wedding ring.β
βDie WalkΓΌre is endured by the average man because it contains four scenes for which he would sit out a Scotch sermon, or even a House of Commons debate. These are the love duet in the first act, Brunnhilde's announcement of death in the second, the ride of the Valkyries and the 'fire-charm' in the third. For them the ordinary playgoer endures hours of Wotan, with Christopher Sly's prayer in his heart. 'Would 'twere over!' Now, I am one of those elect souls who are deeply moved by Wotan. I grant you that as a long-winded, one-eyed gentleman backing a certain champion in a fight and henpecked out of his fancy because his wife objects to the moral character of the champion, he is a dreary person indeed . . . but to one who has understood all its beauties, its lofty aspirations, its tragedy, there is nothing trivial, nothing tedious in Die WalkΓΌre.β
βAny public committee man who tries to pack the moral cards in the interest of his own notions is guilty of corruption and impertinence. The business of a public library is not to supply the public with the books the committee thinks good for the public, but to supply the public with the books the public wants. ... Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read. But as the ratepayer is mostly a coward and a fool in these difficult matters, and the committee is quite sure that it can succeed where the Roman Catholic Church has made its index expurgatorius the laughing-stock of the world, censorship will rage until it reduces itself to absurdity; and even then the best books will be in danger still.β
βIt is far more likely that by the time nationalization has become the rule, and private enterprise the exception, Socialism (which is really rather a bad name for the business) will be spoken of, if at all, as a crazy religion held by a fanatical sect in that darkest of dark ages, the nineteenth century. Already, indeed, I am told that Socialism has had its day, and that the sooner we stop talking nonsense about it and set to work, like the practical people we are, to nationalize the coal mines and complete a national electrification scheme, the better. And I, who said forty years ago that we should have had Socialism already but for the Socialists, am quite willing to drop the name if dropping it will help me to get the thing. What I meant by my jibe at the Socialists of the eighteen-eighties was that nothing is ever done, and much is prevented, by people who do not realize that they cannot do everything at once.β
βCusins: Call you poverty a crime?
Undershaft: The worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues beside it: all the other dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing: a murder here and a theft there, a blow now and a curse then: what do they matter? they are only the accidents and illnesses of life: there are not fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed people. They poison us morally and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty.β
Undershaft: The worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues beside it: all the other dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing: a murder here and a theft there, a blow now and a curse then: what do they matter? they are only the accidents and illnesses of life: there are not fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed people. They poison us morally and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty.β
βI object to all punishment whatsoever. I don't want to punish anybody, but there are an extraordinary number of people whom I want to kill. Not in any unkind or personal spirit. But it must be evident to all of you, you must all know half a dozen people at least, who are no use in this world; who are more trouble than they are worth. And I think it would be a good thing to make everybody come before a properly appointed board, just as he might come before the income tax commissioners, and say every 5 years or every 7 years, just put them there, and say, sir or madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence? If you can't justify your existence; if you're not pulling your weight in the social boat; if you are 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.β
βMonogamy has a sentimental basis which is quite distinct from the political one of equal numbers of the sexes. Equal numbers in the sexes are quite compatible with a change of partners every day or every hour. Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and calves, and that men and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock. Accordingly, the people whose conception of marriage is a farm-yard or slave-quarter conception are always more or less in a panic lest the slightest relaxation of the marriage laws should utterly demoralize society; whilst those to whom marriage is a matter of more highly evolved sentiments and needs (sometimes said to be distinctively human, though birds and animals in a state of freedom evince them quite as touchingly as we) are much more liberal, knowing as they do that monogamy will take care of itself provided the parties are free enough, and that promiscuity is a product of slavery and not of liberty.β
βA nation should always be healthily rebellious; but the king or prime minister has yet to be found who will make trouble by cultivating that side of the national spirit. A child should begin to assert itself early, and shift for itself more and more not only in washing and dressing itself, but in opinions and conduct; yet as nothing is so exasperating and so unlovable as an uppish child, it is useless to expect parents and schoolmasters to inculcate this uppishness. Such unamiable precepts as Always contradict an authoritative statement, Always return a blow, Never lose a chance of a good fight, When you are scolded for a mistake ask the person who scolds you whether he or she supposes you did it on purpose, and follow the question with a blow or an insult or some other unmistakable expression of resentment, Remember that the progress of the world depends on your knowing better than your elders, are just as important as those of The Sermon on the Mount; but no one has yet seen them written up in letters of gold in a schoolroom or nursery.β
βI have never admitted the right of an elderly author to alter the work of a young author, even when the young author happens to be his former self. In the case of a work which is a mere exhibition of skill in conventional art, there may be some excuse for the delusion that the longer the artist works on it the nearer he will bring it to perfection. Yet even the victims of this delusion must see that there is an age limit to the process, and that though a man of forty-five may improve the workmanship of a man of thirty-five, it does not follow that a man of fifty-five can do the same.
When we come to creative art, to the living word of a man delivering a message to his own time, it is clear that any attempt to alter this later on is simply fraud and forgery. As I read the old Quintessence of Ibsenism I may find things that I see now at a different angle, or correlate with so many things then unnoted by me that they take on a different aspect. But though this may be a reason for writing another book, it is not a reason for altering an existing one.β
When we come to creative art, to the living word of a man delivering a message to his own time, it is clear that any attempt to alter this later on is simply fraud and forgery. As I read the old Quintessence of Ibsenism I may find things that I see now at a different angle, or correlate with so many things then unnoted by me that they take on a different aspect. But though this may be a reason for writing another book, it is not a reason for altering an existing one.β
βThe old Whigs and new Tories of the school of Cobden and Bright, the "Philosophic Radicals," the economists of whom Bastiat is the type, Lord Wemyss and Lord Bramwell, Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. Auberon Herbert, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Arthur Balfour, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Leonard Courtney: any of these is, in England, a more typical Anarchist than Bakounin. They distrust State action, and are jealous advocates of the prerogative of the individual, proposing to restrict the one and to extend the other as far as is humanly possible, in opposition to the Social-Democrat, who proposes to democratize the State and throw upon it the whole work of organizing the national industry, thereby making it the most vital organ in the social body.β
βI have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capability to the changing phase of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. The world must doubtless attach high value to the predictions of great men like me. I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of to-morrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of to-day. The medieval ecclesiastics either through ignorance or bigotry painted Muhammadanism in the darkest colours. They were in fact trained both to hate the man Muhammad and his religion. To them Muhammad was Anti-Christ. I have studied him β the wonderful man β and in my opinion far from being an Anti-Christ he must be called the Saviour of Humanity. I believe that 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 it the much-needed peace and happiness. But to proceed, it was in the 19th century that honest thinkers like Carlyle, Goethe and Gibbon perceived intrinsic worth in the religion of Muhammad and thus there was some change for the better in the European attitude towards Islam. But the Europe of the present century is far advanced. It is beginning to be enamoured of the creed of Muhammad. In the next century it may go still further in recognising the utility of that creed in solving its problems and it is in this sense that you must understand my prediction. Already even at the present time many of my own people and of Europe as well have gone over to the faith of Muhammad, and the Islamization of Europe, to use the expression of your own query, may be said to have begun.β
βThe apparent multiplicity of Gods is bewildering at the first glance; but you presently discover that they are all the same one God in different aspects and functions and even sexes. There is always one uttermost God who defies personification. This makes Hinduism the most tolerant religion in the world, because its one transcendent God includes all possible Gods... Hinduism is so elastic and so subtle that the profoundest Methodist and the crudest idolater are equally at home in it.
Islam is very different, being ferociously intolerant. What I may call Manifold Monotheism becomes in the minds of very simple folk an absurdly polytheistic idolatry, just as European peasants not only worship Saints and the Virgin as Gods, but will fight fanatically for their faith in the ugly little black doll who is the Virgin of their own Church against the black doll of the next village. When the Arabs had run this sort of idolatry to such extremes ... they did this without black dolls and worshipped any stone that looked funny, Mahomet rose up at the risk of his life and insulted the stones shockingly, declaring that there is only one God, Allah, the glorious, the great... And there was to be no nonsense about toleration. You accepted Allah or you had your throat cut by someone who did accept him, and who went to Paradise for having sent you to Hell. Mahomet was a great Protestant religious force, like George Fox or Wesley....
There is actually a great Hindu sect, the Jains, with Temples of amazing magnificence, which abolish God, not on materialist atheist considerations, but as unspeakable and unknowable, transcending all human comprehension.β
Islam is very different, being ferociously intolerant. What I may call Manifold Monotheism becomes in the minds of very simple folk an absurdly polytheistic idolatry, just as European peasants not only worship Saints and the Virgin as Gods, but will fight fanatically for their faith in the ugly little black doll who is the Virgin of their own Church against the black doll of the next village. When the Arabs had run this sort of idolatry to such extremes ... they did this without black dolls and worshipped any stone that looked funny, Mahomet rose up at the risk of his life and insulted the stones shockingly, declaring that there is only one God, Allah, the glorious, the great... And there was to be no nonsense about toleration. You accepted Allah or you had your throat cut by someone who did accept him, and who went to Paradise for having sent you to Hell. Mahomet was a great Protestant religious force, like George Fox or Wesley....
There is actually a great Hindu sect, the Jains, with Temples of amazing magnificence, which abolish God, not on materialist atheist considerations, but as unspeakable and unknowable, transcending all human comprehension.β
George Bernard Shaw Quotes by Topic
Find exactly what you are looking for by browsing this categorized list of George Bernard Shaw quotes by topic.
George Bernard Shaw on Love 4 quotes
βLove is a simple thing and a deep thing: it is an act of life and not an illusion. Art is an illusion.β
George Bernard Shaw on Vegetarianism 4 quotes
βI was a cannibal for twenty-five years. For the rest I have been a vegetarian. It was Shelley who first opened my eyes to the savagery of my diet.β
George Bernard Shaw on Censorship 3 quotes
βAssassination is the extreme form of censorship.β
George Bernard Shaw on Socialism 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on Socialism →George Bernard Shaw on Religion 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on Religion →What George Bernard Shaw Said About Others
Discover personal opinions George Bernard Shaw shared regarding contemporaries.
George Bernard Shaw on Jesus 3 quotes
βMust then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?β
George Bernard Shaw on Joan of Arc 2 quotes
βMust then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?β
George Bernard Shaw on Charles Dickens 2 quotes
βOne of the greatest books ever written in the English language was called Little Dorrit, and as soon as Englishmen realised that Little Dorrit was true there would be a revolution.β
George Bernard Shaw on Albert Einstein 2 quotes
βThis man is not challenging the fact of science; he is challenging the action [or axioms] of science. Not only is he challenging the action of science, but the action of science has surrendered to his challenge.β
George Bernard Shaw on Oscar Wilde
βWhy was I born with such contemporaries?β
Quotes About George Bernard Shaw
Gain deeper perspective through quotes about George Bernard Shaw from others.
James Agate on George Bernard Shaw
Jacques Barzun on George Bernard Shaw 5 quotes
βShaw knows at any moment, on any subject, what he thinks, what you will think, what others have thought, what all this thinking entails; and he takes the most elaborate pains to bring these thoughts to light in a form which is by turns abstract and familiar, conciliatory and aggressive, obvious and inferential, comic and puzzling. In a word, Shaw is perhaps the most consciously conscious mind that has ever thought β certainly the most conscious since Rousseau; which may be why both of them often create the same impression of insincerity amounting to charlatanism. Yet it is by excess of honesty that Shaw himself lent color to his representation as an inconsequential buffoon bent on monopolizing the spotlight.β
Max Beerbohm on George Bernard Shaw
βMr. Shaw cannot realise his own pertness, nor can he preserve his own gravity, for more than a few moments at a time. Even when he sets out to be funny for fun's sake, he must needs always pretend that there is a serious reason for the emprise; and he pretends so strenuously that he ends by convincing us almost as fully as he convinces himself. Thus the absurdity, whatever it be, comes off doubly well. Conversely, even when he is really engrossed in some process of serious argument, or moved to real eloquence by one of his social ideals, he emits involuntarily some wild jape which makes the whole thing ridiculous β as ridiculous to himself as to us; and straightway he proceeds to caricature his own thesis till everything is topsy-turvy; and we, rolling with laughter, look up and find him no longer on his head, but on his heels, talking away quite gravely; and this sets us off again. For, of course, when seriousness and frivolity thus co-exist inseparably in a man, the seriousness is nullified by the frivolity. The latter is fed by the former, but, graceless and vampire-like, kills it. As a teacher, as a propagandist, Mr. Shaw is no good at all, even in his own generation. But as a personality he is immortal. Posterity will not, I fancy, read his writings. He has not enough of the specific art-sense for writing. I will not exasperate him by complaining that he has no sense of beauty in the use of his medium: the idea of beauty is a red rag to him, as we know. I will merely suggest that he has in his writing the qualities of a public speaker rather than of a writer. He does not write with that closeness which is the result not of haste but of leisure, and which is the main secret of good literature. He is too glib, too fluent, too diffuse, and too loud. Glibness and fluency, loudness and diffusion, are just the qualities needed for addressing an audience. But between speaking and writing there is a vast difference. A good writer cannot make good speeches, and Mr. Shaw's seems an instance to prove that a good speaker cannot write well. We, his contemporaries, can read him with delight, even though we seem to miss the reporter's interpolation of "laughter", "cheers", "interruption", and so forth. But relentlessly, in course of time, lack of solid form "tells on" writing. However interesting a writer may be, he will not, unless he be a strict artist, be read by posterity. Style, as has been said, is the one antiseptic. But, though Mr. Shaw's writing be not good enough for the next generation, he himself, being so signally unique, is good enough for all time. I wish I had the leisure to be his Boswell, and he the kindness to be my Johnson.β
Jorge Luis Borges on George Bernard Shaw 2 quotes
βThe writers of our century delight in the weaknesses of the human condition; the only one capable of inventing heroes was Bernard Shaw.β
John Campbell on George Bernard Shaw
βHe was a Tolstoy with jokes, a modern Dr Johnson, a universal genius who on his own modest reckoning put even Shakespeare in the shade.β
Disputed Quotes
Quotes attributed to George Bernard Shaw that are questionable.
βShaw: Madam, would you sleep with me for a million pounds?
Actress: My goodness, Well, I'd certainly think about it
Shaw: Would you sleep with me for a pound?
Actress: Certainly not! What kind of woman do you think I am?!
Shaw: Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling over the price.β
Actress: My goodness, Well, I'd certainly think about it
Shaw: Would you sleep with me for a pound?
Actress: Certainly not! What kind of woman do you think I am?!
Shaw: Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling over the price.β
βI hold the Prophet of Arabia in great esteem and I can quite understand that it would have been impossible to restrain and wean that illiterate and perverse race, sunk in the miasma of utter moral depravity, from committing the most heinous of crimes, and imbue its people with enthusiasm to strive after righteousness and assimilate high morals and virtues, without projecting such a terrible and intensely awe inspiring spectacle of Hell and an equally captivating and enticing image of a land flowing with milk and honey to represent Heaven before their vision.β
Misattributed Quotes
Quotes mistakenly credited to George Bernard Shaw
βIn my view, Anglo-Irish history is for Englishmen to remember, for Irishmen to forget.β
βGeorge Bernard Shaw is said to have told W.S.C.:
Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friendβif you have one.
W.S.C. to G.B.S.:
Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the secondβif there is one.β
Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friendβif you have one.
W.S.C. to G.B.S.:
Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the secondβif there is one.β
βThe trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.β
βThe single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.β
About George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 β 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist with a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory. He wrote more than sixty plays, including such works as Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1913) and Saint Joan (1923). Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925.