George Bernard Shaw Quotes

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

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.

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

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All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current concepts, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. There is the whole case against censorships in a nutshell.

Literature is too full of 'acknowledgments' and squabbles about originality...

I know I began as a passion and have ended as a habit, like all husbands.

Any sort of plain speaking is better than the nauseous sham good fellowship our democratic public men get up for shop use.

Biz iki hırsız arasında kendimizi ifade ederiz. Düne ait üzüntüler ve yarına ait korkular.

The only fundamental and possible Socialism is the socialization of the selective breeding of Man: in other terms, of human evolution We must eliminate the Yahoo, or his vote will wreck the commonwealth.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

I object to all punishment whatsoever. I don't want to punish anybody, but there are an extraordinary number of people who I want to kill. Not in any unkind or personal spirit. But it must be evident to all of you, you must all know have a dozen (1/12) 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.

Heaven, as conventionally conceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty of people have described a day at the seaside.

Великото изкуство да бъдеш приятен в разговора е да го водиш така, че другите да бъдат доволни от себе си.

You never bother about their being only women: you talk to them just as you do to me or any other fellow. That's the secret of your success. You can't think how sick they get of being treated with the respect due to their sex.

I appeal to the chemists to discover a humane gas that will kill instantly and painlessly. In short, a gentlemanly gas – deadly by all means, but humane not cruel.

No doubt there are slavish women as well as slavish men; and women, like men, admire those that are stronger than themselves.

She has even secret mischievous moments in which she wishes she could get him alone, on a desert island, away from all ties and with nobody else in the world to consider, and just drag him off his pedestal and see him making love like any common man.