George Bernard Shaw Quotes

Irish playwright, critic, and polemicist (1856–1950)

Add quote

George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 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.

Bio from: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Alternative Names: Bernard Shaw • G.B. Shaw • G. Bernard Shaw

From Wikidata (CC0)

Showing quotes in randomized order to avoid selection bias. Click Popular for most popular quotes.

The ultimate form of censorship is assassination.

Yüzümüzü görmek için aynaya, ruhumuzu görmek için sanat yapıtına bakarız.

Rasa ingin tahu adalah kunci yang membuka pintu pengetahuan.

The true joy in life is to be a force of fortune instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy

Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research.

Cusins: 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.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

"[T]he most elaborate code of [law]... would still have left unspecified a hundred ways in which wreckers of Communism could have sidetracked it without ever having to face the essential questions: are you pulling your weight in the social boat? are you giving more trouble than you are worth? have you earned the privilege of living in a civilized community? That is why the Russians were forced to set up an Inquisition or Star Chamber, called at first the Cheka and now the Gay Pay Oo (Ogpu), to go into these questions and "liquidate" persons who could not answer them satisfactorily."

It is more dangerous to be a great prophet or poet than to promote twenty companies for swindling simple folk out of their savings.

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?

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will.

Self-denial is not a virtue: it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.

I like a bit of a mongrel myself, whether it's a man or a dog; they're the best for every day.

Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal your own.

Time enough to think of the future when you haven't any future to think of.