George bernard shaw quotes

Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.

If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people's opinions will rush in from all quarters.

If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself.

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

A cigarette is a pinch of tobacco rolled in paper with fire at one end and a fool at the other.

A married man is a man with a past, while a bachelor is a man with a future.

Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful.

The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

There is nothing more dangerous than the conscience of a bigot.

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

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

Marx's Kapital is not a treatise on socialism; it is a gerrymand against the bourgeoisie. It was supposed to be written for the working class, but the working man respects the bourgeoisie and wants to be a bourgeoisie. Marx never got a hold of him for a moment. It was the revolting sons of the bourgeoisie itself, like myself, that painted the flag red. The middle and upper classes are the revolutionary element in society. The proletariat is the conservative element.

Heartbreak is life educating us.

Man's inhumanity to man is only surpassed by his cruelty to animals

Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid...There is no harm in a well-fed lion. It has no ideals, no sect, no party.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.

Most people do not pray; they only beg.

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

People who are hard, grasping and always ready to take advantage of their neighbors become very rich.

Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: he is always convinced that it says what he means.

Experience fails to teach where there is no desire to learn.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

The only person who acts sensibly is my tailor. He takes my measure anew every time he sees me. Everyone else goes by their old measurements.

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

Tradition will accustom people to any atrocity

Doing what needs to be done may not make you happy, but it will make you great.

Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart's desire; the other is to get it.

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.

This is the true joy in life: Being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, 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. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

It is the first duty of every man not to be poor.

Treat a friend as a person who may someday become your enemy; an enemy as a person who may someday become your friend.

Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Our lives are shaped not as much by our experiences as by our expectations.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

If at age 20 you are not a Communist then you have no heart. If at age 30 you are not a Capitalist then you have no brains.

The more a man possesses over and above what he uses, the more careworn he becomes.

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

Discussing vaccination with a doctor is like discussing vegetarianism with a butcher.

The truth is the one thing that nobody will believe.

Start with the belief that your life can indeed be changed, and that you have the power to change it.

The surest way to ruin a man who doesn't know how to handle money is to give him some.

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.

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

Poverty doesn't bring unhappiness; it brings degradation.

War does not decide who is right but who is left.

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

Some people look at the world and say 'why?' Some people look at the world and say 'why not?'

Our necessities are few, but our wants are endless.

We all go about longing for love: it is the first need of our natures, the loudest cry of our hearts.

The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.

Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

Beware of the man whose God is in the skies.

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

I believe in the discipline of silence, and could talk for hours about it.

It is not that I am so clever; it is that everyone else is so stupid.

Don't lose faith. Promise yourself that you will be a success story, and I promise you that all the forces of the universe will unite to come to your aid; you might not feel today or for a while, but the longer you wait the bigger the prize.

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

Write your Sad times in Sand, Write your Good times in Stone.

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.

Don't wait for the right opportunity: create it.

People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.

If there was twenty ways of telling the truth and only one way of telling a lie, the Government would find it out. It's in the nature of governments to tell lies.

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.

A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

Our prejudices are so deeply rooted that we never think of them as prejudices but call them common sense.

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

Principles without programs are platitudes.

Being a mother means that your heart is no longer yours; it wanders wherever your children do

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

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

The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.

Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.

The longer I live, the more convinced am I that this planet is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum.

Newspaper : A device unable to distinguish between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation.

The best way to get your point across is to entertain.

Those who can’t change their minds can’t change anything.

No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office.

Life is a first draft... with NO rewrite.

There is not one single established religion that an intelligent, educated man can believe.

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

If any religion had a chance of ruling over England, nay Europe within the next hundred years, it could be Islam.

Home is the girl's prison and the woman's workhouse.

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

We veneer civilization by doing unkind things in a kind way.

If you can’t appreciate what you’ve got, you’d better get what you can appreciate.

It is not enough to know what is good: you must be able to do it.

My way of joking is to tell the truth

The only time my education was interrupted was when I was in school.

Now that we have learned to fly the air like birds, swim under water like fish, we lack one thing - to learn to live on earth as human beings.

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.

You see things and you say, 'Why?'. But I dream things and I say, 'Why not?'.

The person I miss most is the one I could have been.

It is not pleasure that makes life worth living. It is life that makes pleasure worth having.

A socialist is somebody who doesn't have anything, and is ready to divide it up equally among everybody.

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.

Don't waste time collecting other people's autographs; rather devote it to making your own autograph worth collecting.

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

Where there is no knowledge ignorance calls itself science.

Islam is the best religion and Muslims are the worst followers

Indifference is the essence of inhumanity.

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

Grain by grain, a loaf. Stone upon stone, a palace.

The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.