Quotes from G. B. Shaw

Source

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
A doctor’s reputation is made by the number of eminent men who die under his care.
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.
Dancing: The vertical expression of a horizontal desire legalized by music.
Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
Do not try to live for ever. You will not succeed.
England and America are two countries divided by a common language.
Even the youngest of us may be wrong sometimes.
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.
I was always unlawful; I broke the law when I was born because my parents weren't married.
I often quote myself, it adds spice to my conversation.
If all the economists in the world were laid end to end, they wouldn’t reach any conclusion.
It is a woman’s business to get married as soon as possible, and a man’s to keep unmarried as long as he can.
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
Martyrdom: The only way a man can become famous without ability.
My reputation grows with every failure.
One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.
Only Lawyers and mental defectives are automatically exempt for jury duty.
Take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then say it with the utmost levity.
The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.
The 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.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.
Those who can do, those who can't teach.
To be clever enough to get a great deal of money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.
We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence...on pain of liquidation.
We don't stop playing because we grow old; We grow old because we stop playing !
What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattery.
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.
When a man teaches something he does not know to somebody else who has no aptitude for it, and gives him a certificate of proficiency, the latter has completed the education of a gentleman.
Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.
You see things; and you say `Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say `Why not?
Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.