George Bernard Shaw Quotes

George Bernard Shaw Quote: Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

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

George Bernard Shaw (The Doctor's Dilemma, 1906)

Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another.

George Bernard Shaw (Pygmalion, 1912)

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

George Bernard Shaw (Man and Superman - Maxims for Revolutionists, 1903)

A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows.

George Bernard Shaw (Quoted in The Star, 1890)

My specialty is being right when other people are wrong.

George Bernard Shaw (You Never Can Tell, 1897)

The conversion of a savage to Christianity is the conversion of Christianity to savagery. 

George Bernard Shaw (Man and Superman - Act III, 1903)

I never resist temptation because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.

George Bernard Shaw (The Apple Cart, 1928)

Shall I turn up the light for you? 
No, give me deeper darkness. Money is not made in the light.

George Bernard Shaw (Heartbreak House, 1919)

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny. They have only shifted it to another shoulder.

George Bernard Shaw (Man and Superman, 1903)

What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn't come every day.

George Bernard Shaw (Pygmalion, 1912)

The man who listens to Reason is lost: Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her. 

George Bernard Shaw (Man and Superman - The Revolutionist's Handbook, 1903)

Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it…

George Bernard Shaw (Quoted in The World, 1893)

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

George Bernard Shaw (Man and Superman - Maxims for Revolutionists, 1903)

The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it.

George Bernard Shaw (Man and Superman - Maxims for Revolutionists, 1903)

A love affair should always be a honeymoon. And the only way to make sure of that is to keep changing the man; for the same man can never keep it up.

George Bernard Shaw (Too True to be Good, 1931)

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.

George Bernard Shaw (Man and Superman - Maxims for Revolutionists, 1903)

I do not, like the Fundamentalists, believe that creation stopped six thousand years ago after a week of hard work. Creation is going on all the time.

George Bernard Shaw (Speech at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, 1933)

What right has any human being to talk of bringing up a child? You do not bring up a tree or a plant. It brings itself up. You have to give it a fair chance by tilling the soil.

George Bernard Shaw (Platform and Pulpit, 1961)

Men are always thinking that they are going to do something grandly wicked to their enemies; but when it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones.

George Bernard Shaw (Captain Brassbound's Conversion, 1900)

When will we realize that the fact that we can become accustomed to anything, however disgusting at first, makes it necessary to examine carefully everything we have become accustomed to.

George Bernard Shaw (A Treatise on Parents and Children, 1910)

Life is a disease; and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You are always at the crisis: I am always in the convalescent stage.

George Bernard Shaw (Back to Methuselah, 1920)

We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies.

George Bernard Shaw (Heartbreak House, 1919)

The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.

George Bernard Shaw (Androcles and the Lion, 1912)

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say "I know" instead of "I am learning," and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for scepticism and activity.

George Bernard Shaw (The Doctor's Dilemma, 1906)

What is hope? A form of moral responsibility. Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in short, is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.

George Bernard Shaw (Man and Superman - Act III, 1903)

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. 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.

George Bernard Shaw (Mrs. Warren's Profession - Act III, 1893)

Alcohol is a very necessary article... It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.

George Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara - Act II, 1905)

Christianity as a specific doctrine was slain with Jesus, suddenly and utterly. He was hardly cold in his grave, or high in his heaven (as you please), before the apostles dragged the tradition of him down to the level of the thing it has remained ever since.

George Bernard Shaw (Androcles and the Lion, 1912)

Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannnot endure it.... Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life.

George Bernard Shaw (Letter, 1900)

When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.

George Bernard Shaw (Getting Married, 1908)

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

George Bernard Shaw Biography

Born: July 26, 1856
Died: November 2, 1950

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and activist. He is best known for his abundant plays and his contribution to literature. He was also awarded a Nobel Prize for literature in 1925.

Notable Works

Mrs Warren's Profession (1893)
Candida (1894)
You Never Can Tell (1897)
The Devil's Disciple (1897)
Caesar and Cleopatra (1898)
Man and Superman (1903)
Major Barbara (1905)
The Doctor's Dilemma (1906)
Getting Married (1908)
Misalliance (1910)
Androcles and the Lion (1912)
Pygmalion (1912)
Annajanska (1917)
Heartbreak House (1919)
Back to Methuselah (1920)
Saint Joan (1923)
The Apple Cart (1928)
Signature

Picture Quotes