George Bernard Shaw Quotes and its meanings

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.

Beauty is all very well at first sight but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

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

If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance.

The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion.

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

What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?

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

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

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

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

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 only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.

A man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.

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

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.

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

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

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.

Never fret for an only son, the idea of failure will never occur to him.

My reputation grows with every failure.

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.

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

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

Martyrdom: The only way a man can become famous without ability.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.

Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.

There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.

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

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

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

The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

I'm an atheist and I thank God for it.

A man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

He's a man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.

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

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

A man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

He's a man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

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

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

Give a man health and a course to steer, and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not.

Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die do not outlive yourself.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

The great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life.

Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.

Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you. They may have different tastes.

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

It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.

I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.

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

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

Beware of false knowledge it is more dangerous than ignorance.

In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it's more dangerous to lose than to win.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

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

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

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

There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

Oh, the tiger will love you. There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open.

Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.

Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

Lack of money is the root of all evil.

When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn't got any.

We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.

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

You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?

She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.

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

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

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

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.

Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.

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

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

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

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

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they cant find them, they make them.

Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.

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

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.

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

The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.

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

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

Beware of false knowledge it is more dangerous than ignorance.

The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

If women were particular about men's characters, they would never get married at all.

When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.