George Bernard Shaw

“Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.”

“There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.”

“El hombre es civilizado en la medida que comprende a un gato.”

“I’m an atheist and I thank God for it.”

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

“La science est une nouvelle religion et la désinfection est son eau bénite.”

“Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.”

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

“Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.”

“In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“No es ningún mérito sufrir”

“Only in books has mankind known perfect truth, love and beauty.”

“Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity, and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.”

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

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

“I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.”

“When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.”

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

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

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

“When the horrors of anarchy force us to set up laws that forbid us to fight and torture one another for sport, we still snatch at every excuse for declaring individuals outside the protection of law and torturing them to our hearts content.”

“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. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.”

“It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.”

“For four wicked centuries the world has dreamed this foolish dream of efficiency; and the end is not yet. But the end will come.”

“I knew if I waited around long enough something like this would happen.”

“Liquor is the chloroform which enables the poor man to endure the painful operation of living.”

“Wilde's permanent celebrity belongs to literature, and only his transient notoriety to police news.”

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”

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

“La libertad supone responsabilidad.Por eso la mayor parte de los hombres la temen tanto.”

“It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.”

“While browsing in a second-hand bookshop one day, George Bernard Shaw was amused to find a copy of one of his own works which he himself had inscribed for a friend: "To ----, with esteem, George Bernard Shaw."He immediately purchased the book and returned it to the friend with a second inscription: "With renewed esteem, George Bernard Shaw.”

“All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.”

“Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read."[As quoted in Literary Censorship in England (in Current Opinion, Vol. 55, No. 5, November 1913)]”

“I have very carefully studied Islam and the life of its Prophet (PBUH). I have done so both as a student of history and as a critic. And I have come to conclusion that Muhammad (PBUH) was indeed a great man and a deliverer and benefactor of mankind which was till then writhing under the most agonising Pain.”

“Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!”

“My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably.”

“The longer I live, the more I realize that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time!”

“After all, the wrong road always leads somewhere.”

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

“Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!”

“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.”

“I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anything that had my name on it.”

“Colonel Hugh Pickering - Well, I'm dashed!”