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Even To This Day It Is Easier Than It Ought To Be For Me To Get A Rise Out Of An American By Telling Him Something About Himself Which Is Equally True About Every Human Being On The Face Of The Globe. He At Once Resents This As A Disparagement And An Assertion On My Part That People In Other Parts Of The Globe Are Not Like That, And Are Loftily Superior To Such Weaknesses.

-George Bernard Shaw

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Even To This Day

George Bernard Shaw

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Even To This Day It Is Easier Than It Ought To Be For Me To Get A Rise Out Of An American By Telling Him Something About Himself Which Is Equally True About Every Human Being On The Face Of The Globe. He At Once Resents This As A Disparagement And An Assertion On My Part That People In Other Parts Of The Globe Are Not Like That, And Are Loftily Superior To Such Weaknesses.

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To Me The Sole Hope Of Human Salvation Lies In Teaching.

From A Very Early Age, I've Had To Interrupt My Education To Go To School.

When Commenting On The Turmoil And Disorder Of The World, If The Other Planets Are Inhabited, They Must Be Using This Earth As Their Insane Asylum.

A Family Is A Tyranny Ruled Over By It's Weakest Member.

The Most Sublime Courage I Have Ever Witnessed Has Been Among That Class Too Poor To Know They Possessed It, And Too Humble For The World To Discover It.

The Technical History Of Modern Harmony Is A History Of Growth Of Toleration By The Human Ear Of Chords That At First Sounded Discordant And Senseless To The Main Body Of Contemporary Professional Musicians.

We Are The Masters At The Moment, And Not Only At The Moment, But For A Very Long Time To Come.

Experience Is A Wonderful Thing. It Enables You To Recognize A Mistake When You Make It Again. If All Economists Were Laid End To End They Would Not Reach A Conclusion.

After Studying The Hungarian Language For Years, I Can Confidently Conclude That Had Hungarian Been My Mother Tongue, It Would Have Been More Precious. Simply Because Through This Extraordinary, Ancient And Powerful Language It Is Possible To Precisely Describe The Tiniest Differences And The Most Secretive Tremors Of Emotions.

Marriage Is Popular Because It Combines The Maximum Of Temptation With The Maximum Of Opportunity.

That Is The Injustice Of A Woman's Lot. A Woman Has To Bring Up Her Children; And That Means To Restrain Them, To Deny Them Things They Want, To Set Them Tasks, To Punish Them When They Do Wrong, To Do All The Unpleasant Things. And Then The Father, Who Has Nothing To Do But Pet Them And Spoil Them, Comes In When All Her Work Is Done And Steals Their Affection From Her.

Being Hurt By Someone You Truly Care About Leaves A Hole In You Heart That Only Love Can Fill.

A Modern Gentleman [rich Person] Is Necessarily The Enemy Of His Country. Even In War He Does Not Fight To Defend It, But To Prevent His Power Of Preying On It From Passing To A Foreigner.

Martyrdom, Sir, Is What These People Like: It Is The Only Way In Which A Man Can Become Famous Without Ability.

As Long As You Don't Fly Openly In The Face Of Society, Society Doesn't Ask Any Inconvenient Questions; And It Makes Precious Short Work Of The Cads Who Do. There Are No Secrets Better Kept Than The Secrets Everybody Guesses.

Life Would Be Tolerable But For Its Amusements.

Music Is The Brandy Of The Damned.

I Am A Christian. That Obliges Me To Be A Communist.

Most People Do Not Pray; They Only Beg.

We Sing In A Church, Why Can We Not Dance There?

There Is The Eternal War Between Those Who Are In The World For What They Can Get Out Of It And Those Who Are In The World To Make It A Better Place For Everybody To Live In.

To Me The Sole Hope Of Human Salvation Lies In Teaching Man To Regard Himself As An Experiment In The Realization Of God, To Regard His Hands As God's Hand, His Brain As God's Brain, His Purpose As God's Purpose. He Must Regard God As A Helpless Longing, Which Longed Him Into Existence By Its Desperate Need For An Executive Organ.

My Schooling Not Only Failed To Teach Me What It Professed To Be Teaching, But Prevented Me From Being Educated To An Extent Which Infuriates Me When I Think Of All I Might Have Learned At Home By Myself.

A Woman Whose Face Looked As If It Had Been Made Of Sugar And Someone Had Licked It.

Revelations: A Curious Record Of The Visions Of A Drug Addict.

Consciousness Of A Fact Is Not Knowing It: If It Were, The Fish Would Know More Of The Sea Than The Geographers And The Naturalists.

No Child Should Be Brought Up To Suppose That Its Food And Clothes Come Down From Heaven Or Are Miraculously Conjured From Empty Space By Papa. Loathsome As We Have Made The Idea Of Duty (like The Idea Of Work) We Must Habituate Children To A Sense Of Repayable Obligation To The Community For What They Consume And Enjoy, And Inculcate The Repayment As A Point Of Honor.

With The Single Exception Of Homer, There Is No Eminent Writer, Not Even Sir Walter Scott, Whom I Can Despise So Entirely As I Despise Shakespeare When I Measure My Mind Against His. . . . It Would Positively Be A Relief To Me To Dig Him Up And Throw Stones At Him.

Life Is Not Meant To Be Easy, My Child; But Take Courage: It Can Be Delightful.

A Government That Robs Peter To Pay Paul Can Always Depend On The Support Of Paul.

We All Go About Longing For Love: It Is The First Need Of Our Natures, The Loudest Cry Of Our Hearts.

I Want To Be All Used Up When I Die.

Treat A Friend As A Person Who May Someday Become Your Enemy; An Enemy As A Person Who May Someday Become Your Friend.

You Propound A Complicated Arithmetical Problem: Say Cubing A Number Containing Four Digits. Give Me A Slate And Half An Hour's Time, And I Can Produce A Wrong Answer.

Few People Think More Than Two Or Three Times A Year; I Have Made An International Reputation For Myself By Thinking Once Or Twice A Week.

Property Is Organized Robbery.

Schools Must Not Become The Agencies Through Which Propaganda Advocated By Any Section Of Society Is Spread. The Method Of Control Always A Crucial Problem Should Be In Harmony With The Fundamental Values And Principles Of The States And The Entire E

Science Becomes Dangerous Only When It Imagines That It Has Reached Its Goal.

The Conversion Of A Savage To Christianity Is The Conversion Of Christianity To Savagery.

I Have Never Thought Much Of The Courage Of A Lion Tamer. Inside The Cage He Is At Least Safe From Other Men. There Is Not Much Harm In A Lion. He Has No Ideals, No Religion, No Politics, No Chivalry, No Gentility; In Short, No Reason For Destroying Anything That He Does Not Want To Eat

In Your Dread Of Dictators You Established A State Of Society In Which Every Ward Boss Is A Dictator, Every Private Employer A Dictator, Every Financier A Dictator, All With The Livelihood Of The Workers At His Mercy, And No Public Responsibility.

The Open Mind Never Acts: When We Have Done Our Utmost To Arrive At A Reasonable Conclusion, We Still Must Close Our Minds For The Moment With A Snap, And Act Dogmatically On Our Conclusions.

Effectiveness Of Assertion Is The Alpha And Omega Of Style.

Alpha And Omega

You Can Lose A Man Like That By Your Own Death, But Not By His.

Death And Dying

All Great Truth First Starts As Blasphemy.

I Am Giving You Examples Of The Fact That This Creature Man, Who In His Own Selfish Affairs Is A Coward To The Backbone, Will Fight For An Idea Like A Hero. . . . I Tell You, Gentlemen, If You Can Shew A Man A Piece Of What He Now Calls God's Work To Do, And What He Will Later Call By Many New Names, You Can Make Him Entirely Reckless Of The Consequences To Himself Personally.

I Have Defined The Hundred Per Cent American As Ninety-nine Per Cent An Idiot.

A Man's Interest In The World Is Only The Overflow From His Interest In Himself. When You Are A Child Your Vessel Is Not Yet Full;so You Care For Nothing But Your Own Affairs. When You Grow Up, Your Vessel Overflows; And You Are A Politician, A Philosopher, Or An Explorer And Adventurer. In Old Age The Vessel Dries Up: There Is No Overflow: You Are A Child Again.

All Roads End At The Grave, Which Is The Gate To Nothingness.

A Man Has No Business To Marry A Woman Who Can't Make Him Miserable. It Means She Can't Make Him Happy.

While We Ourselves Are The Living Graves Of Murdered Animals, How Can We Expect Any Ideal Living Conditions On This Earth?

Vegetarians Claim To Be Immune From Most Diseases But They Have Been Known To Die From Time To Time.

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.

Nothing Is Ever Done In This World Until Men Are Prepared To Kill One Another If It Is Not Done.

The American Constitution, One Of The Few Modern Political Documents Drawn Up By Men Who Were Forced By The Sternest Circumstances To Think Out What They Really Had To Face, Instead Of Chopping Logic In A University Classroom.

Reason Enslaves All Whose Minds Are Not Strong Enough To Master Her.

If The Governments Devalue The Currency In Order To Betray All Creditors, You Politely Call This Procedure 'inflation'.

Woman Reduces Us All To The Common Denominator.

Words Are Only Postage Stamps Delivering The Object For You To Unwrap

I Am Oppressed With A Dread Of Living Forever. That Is The Only Disadvantage Of Vegetarianism.

I Never Climbed Any Ladder: I Have Achieved Eminence By Sheer Gravitation.

Pothinus: "is It Possible That Caesar, The Conqueror Of The World, Has Time To Occupy Himself With Such A Trifle As Our Taxes?" Caesar: "my Friend, Taxes Are The Chief Business Of A Conqueror Of The World.

I'm One Of The Undeserving Poor: That's What I Am. Think Of What That Means To A Man. It Means That He's Up Agen Middle Class Morality All The Time.... What Is Middle Class Morality? Just An Excuse For Never Giving Me Anything.

A Succession Of Eye-openers Each Involving The Repudiation Of Some Previously Held Belief.

Laws, Religions, Creeds, And Systems Of Ethics, Instead Of Making Society Better Than Its Best Unit, Make It Worse Than Its Average Unit, Because They Are Never Up To Date.

Instruction In Sex Is As Important As Instruction In Food; Yet Not Only Are Our Adolescents Not Taught The Physiology Of Sex, But Never Warned That The Strongest Sexual Attraction May Exist Between Persons So Incompatible In Tastes And Capacities That They Could Not Endure Living Together For A Week Much Less A Lifetime.

A Fool-proof Method For Sculpting An Elephant: First, Get A Huge Block Of Marble; Then You Chip Away Everything That Doesn't Look Like An Elephant.

Truth Telling Is Not Compatible With The Defence Of The Realm.

Telling The Truth

There Are Two Things Necessary To Salvation.... Money And Gunpowder.

Has Fear Ever Held A Man Back From Anything He Really Wanted?

Napoleon: What Shall We Do With This Soldier, Giuseppe? Everything He Says Is Wrong. Giuseppe: Make Him A General, Excellency, And Then Everything He Says Will Be Right.

In The Right Key One Can Say Anything. In The Wrong Key, Nothing: The Only Delicate Part Is The Establishment Of The Key.

There Are Scores Of Thousands Of Human Insects Who Are Ready At A Moment's Notice To Reveal The Will Of God On Every Possible Subject

Leisure May Be Defined As Free Activity, Labor As Compulsory Activity. Leisure Does What It Likes, Labor Does What It Must, The Compulsion Being That Of Nature, Which In These Latitudes Leaves Men No Choice Between Labor And Starvation.

What Englishman Will Give His Mind To Politics As Long As He Can Afford To Keep A Motor Car?

They Tell Me That So-and-so, Who Does Not Write Prefaces, Is No Charlatan. Well, I Am. I First Caught The Ear Of The British Public On A Cart In Hyde Park, To The Blaring Of Brass Bands,and This . . . Because . . . I Am A Natural-born Mountebank.

A Healthy Nation Is As Unconscious Of Its Nationality As A Healthy Man Of His Bones. But If You Break A Person's Nationality It Will Think Of Nothing Else But Getting It Set Again.

Violence Is The Repartee Of The Illiterate.

The Practical Question, Then, Is What To Do With The Children. Tolerate Them At Home We Will Not. Let Them Run Loose In The Streets We Dare Not Until Our Streets Become Safe Places For Children, Which, To Our Utter Shame, They Are Not At Present, Though They Can Hardly Be Worse Than Some Homes And Some Schools.

Reasonable Men Adapt Themselves To Their Environment; Unreasonable Men Try To Adapt Their Environment To Themselves. Thus All Progress Is The Result Of The Efforts Of Unreasonable Men.

My Schooling Did Me A Great Deal Of Harm And No Good Whatever; It Was Simply Dragging A Child's Soul Through The Dirt.

When The World Goes Mad, One Must Accept Madness As Sanity; Since Sanity Is, In The Last Analysis, Nothing But The Madness On Which The Whole World Happens To Agree.

Your Heart And Your Mouth Wil Be In Two Separate Parts Of Your Body If You Again Forget In Whose Presence You Stand.

I Find That Socialism Is Often Misunderstood By Its Least Intelligent Supporters And Opponents To Mean Simply Unrestrained Indulgence Of Our Natural Propensity To Heave Bricks At Respectable Persons.

Seemingly Unreasonable People Attempt To Adapt The World To Themselves. Much Progress, Therefore, Depends On Such People.

There Is Nothing That Can Be Changed More Completely Than Human Nature When The Job Is Taken In Hand Early Enough.

War Can So Easily Be Gilt With Romance And Heroism And Solemn National Duty And Patriotism And The Like By Persons Whose Superficial Literary And Oratorical Talent Covers An Abyss Of Godforsaken Folly.

The World Is Populated In The Main By People Who Should Not Exist

Democracy Means The Organization Of Society For The Benefit And At The Expense Of Everybody Indiscriminately And Not For The Benefit Of A Privileged Class.

I Do Not Want To Make My Stomach A Graveyard Of Dead Animals.

I Know I Began As A Passion And Have Ended As A Habit , Like All Husbands .

Am Reserving Two Tickets For You For My Premiere. Come And Bring A Friend - If You Have One. Telegram Inviting Winston Churchill To Opening Night Of Pygmalion. Churchill Wired Back: Impossible To Be Present For The First Performance. Will Attend The Second - If There Is One.

Even To This Day It Is Easier Than It Ought To Be For Me To Get A Rise Out Of An American By Telling Him Something About Himself Which Is Equally True About Every Human Being On The Face Of The Globe. He At Once Resents This As A Disparagement And An Assertion On My Part That People In Other Parts Of The Globe Are Not Like That, And Are Loftily Superior To Such Weaknesses.

A Critic Is One Who Leaves No Turn Unstoned.

A Pessimist Is A Man Who Thinks Everybody Is As Nasty As Himself, And Hates Them For It.

Our Lives Are Shaped Not As Much By Our Experiences As By Our Expectations.

The Most Anxious Man In A Prison Is The Governor.

Why Should We Take Advice On Sex From The Pope? If He Knows Anything About It, He Shouldn't!

Gardening Is The Only Unquestionably Useful Job.

I Have Prophesied About The Faith Of Muhammad That It Would Be Acceptable To The Europe Of Tomorrow As It Is Beginning To Be Acceptable To The Europe Of Today. ... I Believe That If A Man Like Him Were To Assume The Dictatorship Of The Modern World He Would Succeed In Solving Its Problems In A Way That Would Bring It The Much-needed Peace And Happiness.

A True Artist Will Let His Wife Starve, His Children Go Barefoot, His Mother Drudge For His Living At Seventy, Sooner Than Work At Anything But His Art.

We Don't Stop Playing Because We Grow Old; We Grow Old Because We Stop Playing.

You Use A Glass Mirror To See Your Face; You Use Works Of Art To See Your Soul.

Hate Is The Revenge Of A Coward Intimidated.

If You Take Too Long In Deciding What To Do With Your Life, You'll Find You've Done It.

The Notion That The Colonel Need Be A Better Man Than The Private Is As Confused As The Notion That The Keystone Need Be Stronger Than The Coping Stone.

Shall I Turn Up The Light For You? No, Give Me Deeper Darkness. Money Is Not Made In The Light.

It Is Not True That Men Can Be Divided Into Absolutely Honest Persons And Absolutely Dishonest Ones. Our Honesty Varies With The Strain Put On It.

My Rank Is The Highest Known In Switzerland: I'm A Free Citizen.

Marry Ann; And At The End Of A Week You'll Find No More Inspiration In Her Than In A Plate Of Muffins.

A Newspaper, Not Having To Act On Its Descriptions And Reports, But Only To Sell Them To Idly Curious People, Has Nothing But Honor To Lose By Inaccuracy And Non-veracity.

What We Want Is To See The Child In Pursuit Of Knowledge, And Not Knowledge In Pursuit Of The Child.

In A Stupid Nation The Man Of Genius Becomes A God : Everybody Worships Him And Nobody Does His Will.

The Great Secret...is Not Having Bad Manners Or Good Manners...but Having The Same Manner For All Human Souls.

What God Hath Joined Together No Man Shall Put Asunder: God Will Take Care Of That.

Christmas Is Forced Upon A Reluctant And Disgusted Nation By The Shopkeepers And The Press; On Its Own Merits It Would Wither And Shrivel In The Fiery Breath Of Universal Hatred.

The Mathematician Is Fascinated With The Marvelous Beauty Of The Forms He Constructs, And In Their Beauty He Finds Everlasting Truth.

The Person I Miss Most Is The One I Could Have Been.

Could Have Been

It Is Impossible For An Englishman To Open His Mouth Without Making Some Other Englishman Hate Or Despise Him.

I Was Convinced That Ceylon Is The Cradle Of The Human Race Because Everybody There Looks An Original. All Other Nations Are Obviously Mass Produced.

The Average Age (longevity) Of A Meat Eater Is 63. I Am On The Verge Of 85 And Still Work As Hard As Ever. I Have Lived Quite Long Enough And Am Trying To Die; But I Simply Cannot Do It. A Single Beef-steak Would Finish Me; But I Cannot Bring Myself To Swallow It. I Am Oppressed With A Dread Of Living Forever. That Is The Only Disadvantage Of Vegetarianism.

Funny Inspirational

Never Forget That If You Leave Your Law To Judges And Your Religion To Bishops, You Will Presently Find Yourself Without Either Law Or Religion.

Finding Yourself

It's Not That I'm So Clever, It Is That Others Are So Stupid.

When A Man Of Normal Habits Is Ill, Everyone Hastens To Assure Him That He Is Going To Recover. When A Vegetarian Is Ill (which Fortunately Very Seldom Happens), Everyone Assures Him That He Is Going To Die, And That They Told Him So, And That It Serves Him Right. They Implore Him To Take At Least A Little Gravy, So As To Give Himself A Chance Of Lasting Out The Night

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.

Life Isn't About Finding Yourself. Life Is About Creating Yourself.

The Trouble With The Media Is That It Seems Unable To Distinguish Between The End Of The World And A Bicycle Accident.

I Am A Sort Of Collector Of Religions: And The Curious Thing Is That I Find I Can Believe In Them All.

Women Are Called Womanly Only When They Regard Themselves As Existing Solely For The Use Of Men.

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.

The Notion That Persons Should Be Safe From Extermination As Long As They Do Not Commit Willful Murder, Or Levy War Against The Crown, Or Kidnap, Or Throw Vitriol, Is Not Only To Limit Social Responsibility Unnecessarily, And To Privilege The Large Range Of Intolerable Misconduct That Lies Outside Them, But To Divert Attention From The Essential Justification For Extermination, Which Is Always Incorrigible Social Incompatibility And Nothing Else.

Give A Man Health And A Course To Steer, And He'll Never Stop To Trouble About Whether He's Happy Or Not.

A Revolutionist Is One Who Desires To Discard The Existing Social Order And Try Another.

Remember Always That The Least Plain Sister Is The Family Beauty.

There May Be Some Doubt As To Who Are The Best People To Have Charge Of Children, But There Can Be No Doubt That Parents Are The Worst.

Your Father Is A Fool Skin Deep; But You Are A Fool To Your Very Marrow.

Most Of My Recent Plays Were Written In The Railway Train Between Hatfield And Kings Cross. I Write Anywhere, On The Top Of Omnibuses Or Wherever I May Be; It Is All The Same To Me.

All Progress Means War With Society.

Progress Of Society

If Ever I Utter An Oath Again May My Soul Be Blasted To Eternal Damnation!

Such Poverty As We Have Today In All Our Great Cities Degrades The Poor, And Infects With Its Degradation The Whole Neighborhood In Which They Live. And Whatever Can Degrade A Neighborhood Can Degrade A Country And A Continent And Finally The Whole Civilized World, Which Is Only A Large Neighborhood.

Progress Is Impossible Without Change; And Those Who Cannot Change Their Minds Cannot Change Anything.

Christianity Might Be A Good Thing If Anyone Ever Tried It.

The Plain Working Truth Is That It Is Not Only Good For People To Be Shocked Occasionally, But Absolutely Necessary To The Progress Of Society That They Should Be Shocked Pretty Often.

Progress Of Society

Assassination Is The Extreme Form Of Censorship; And It Seems Hard To Justify An Incitement To It On Anti-censorial Principles.

Animals Are My Friends... And I Don't Eat My Friends.

Youth Is A Wonderful Thing. What A Crime To Waste It On Children.

Do Not Mistake Your Objection To Defeat For An Objection To Fighting, Your Objection To Being A Slave For An Objection To Slavery, Your Objection To Not Being As Rich As Your Neighbor For An Objection To Poverty. The Cowardly, The Insubordinate, And The Envious Share Your Objections.

You Have Learnt Something. That Always Feels At First As If You Had Lost Something.

Let Not The Right Side Of Your Brain Know What The Left Side Doeth.

The Art Of Government Is The Organization Of Idolatry. The Bureaucracy Consists Of Functionaries; The Aristocracy, Of Idols; The Democracy, Of Idolaters. The Populace Cannot Understand The Bureaucracy: It Can Only Worship The National Idols.

The Writer Who Aims At Producing The Platitudes Which Are "not For An Age, But For All Time" Has His Reward In Being Unreadable Inall Ages.... The Man Who Writes About Himself And His Own Time Is The Only Sort Of Man Who Writes About All People And About All Time.

Stop Being Jews And Start Being Human Beings.

Those Who Understand Evil Pardon It.

The Thief Who Is In Prison Is Not Necessarily More Dishonest Than His Fellows At Large, But Mostly One Who, Through Ignorance Or Stupidity [or Racism Or Poverty! - Draffan] Steals In A Way That Is Not Customary. He Snatches A Loaf From The Baker's Counter And Is Promptly Run Into Gaol. Another Man Snatches Bread From The Table Of Hundreds Of Widows And Orphans And Similar Credulous Souls Who Do Not Know The Ways Of Company Promoters; And, As Likely As Not, He Is Run Into Parliament.

The Medieval Doctors Of Divinity Who Did Not Pretend To Settle How Many Angels Could Dance On The Point Of A Needle Cut A Very Poor Figure As Far As Romantic Credulity Is Concerned Beside The Modern Physicists Who Have Settled To The Billionth Of A Millimetre Every Movement And Position In The Dance Of The Electrons. Not For Worlds Would I Question The Precise Accuracy Of These Calculations Or The Existence Of Electrons (whatever They May Be). The Fate Of Joan Is A Warning To Me Against Such Heresy.

The More Reasonable A Student Was In Mathematics, The More Unreasonable She Was In The Affairs Of Real Life, Concerning Which Fewtrustworthy Postulates Have Yet Been Ascertained.

Time Enough To Think Of The Future When You Haven't Any Future To Think Of.

A Man Thinking Or Working Is Always Alone, Let Him Be Where He Will.

If You Begin By Sacrificing Yourself To Those You Love, You Will End By Hating Those To Whom You Have Sacrificed Yourself.

The First Prison I Ever Saw Had Inscribed On It Cease To Do Evil: Learn To Do Well; But As The Inscription Was On The Outside, The Prisoners Could Not Read It.

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.

Money Enables Us To Get What We Want Instead Of What Other People Think We Want.

It Is Not The Number Of Years We Have Behind Us, But The Number We Have Before Us, That Makes Us Careful And Responsible And Determined To Find Out The Truth About Everything.

I Was A Freethinker Before I Knew How To Think.

I Wish To Boast That Pygmalion Has Been An Extremely Successful Play All Over Europe And North America As Well As At Home. It Is So Intensely And Deliberately Didactic, And Its Subject Is Esteemed So Dry, That I Delight In Throwing It At The Heads Of The Wiseacres Who Repeat The Parrot Cry That Art Should Never Be Didactic. It Goes To Prove My Contention That Art Should Never Be Anything Else.

The Perfect Love Affair Is One Which Is Conducted Entirely By Post.

Better See Rightly On A Pound A Week Than Squint On A Million.

No Man Can Be A Pure Specialist Without Being In The Strict Sense An Idiot.

Religion Is A Great Force - The Only Real Motive Force In The World; But What You Fellows Don't Understand Is That You Must Get At A Man Through His Own Religion And Not Through Yours.

Changeable Women Are More Endurable That Monotonous Ones; They Are Sometimes Murdered But Never Deserted.

Bourgeois Morality Is Largely A System Of Making Cheap Virtues A Cloak For Expensive Vices.

We Must Always Think About Things, And We Must Think About Things As They Are, Not As They Are Said To Be.

We Veneer Civilization By Doing Unkind Things In A Kind Way.

Women Have Been A Ghastly Nuisance In My Life.

What The World Calls Originality Is Only An Unaccustomed Method Of Tickling It.

If A Group Of Beings From Another Planet Were To Land On Earth - Beings Who Considered Themselves As Superior To You As You Feel Yourself To Be To Other Animals - Would You Concede Them The Rights Over You That You Assume Over Other Animals?

The Notion That Inspiration Is Something That Happened Thousands Of Years Ago, And Was Then Finished And Done With. . . The Theory That God Retired From Business At That Period And Has Not Been Heard From Since, Is As Silly As It Is Blasphemous.

No Doubt It Is Easy To Demostrate That Property Will Destroy Society Unless Society Destroys It.

Greatness Is One Of The Sensations Of Littleness

I Sold Flowers. I Didn't Sell Myself. Now You've Made A Lady Of Me I'm Not Fit To Sell Anything Else.

Never Fret For An Only Son, The Idea Of Failure Will Never Occur To Him.

Hell Is Not All Paved With Bad Intentions.

We're Human Beings We Are - All Of Us - And That's What People Are Liable To Forget. Human Beings Don't Like Peace And Goodwill And Everybody Loving Everybody Else. However Much They May Think They Do, They Don't Really Because They're Not Made Like That. Human Beings Love Eating And Drinking And Loving And Hating. They Also Like Showing Off, Grabbing All They Can, Fighting For Their Rights And Bossing Anybody Who'll Give Them Half A Chance.

I Also Made It Quite Clear That Socialism Means Equality Of Income Or Nothing, And That Under Socialism You Would Not Be Allowed To Be Poor. You Would Be Forcibly Feed, Clothed, Lodged, Taught, And Employed Whether You Like It Or Not. If It Were Discovered That You Had Not Character Enough To Be Worth All This Trouble, You Might Possibly Be Executed In A Kindly Manner; But Whilst You Were Permitted To Live You Would Have To Live Well.

Except During The Nine Months Before He Draws His First Breath, No Man Manages His Affairs As Well As A Tree Does.

I Can Think Of No Other Edifice Constructed By Man As Altruistic As A Lighthouse. They Were Built Only To Serve.

Popular Christianity Has For Its Emblem A Gibbet, For Its Chief Sensation A Sanginary Execution After Torture, For Its Central Mystery Is An Insane Vengeance Bought Off By A Trumpery Expiation. But There Is A Nobler And Profounder Christianity Which Affirms The Sacred Mystery Of Equality And Forbids The Glaring Futility And Folly Of Vengeance.

We Have No More Right To Consume Happiness Without Producing It Than To Consume Wealth Without Producing It.

In Truth , Mankind Cannot Be Saved From Without, By Schoolmasters Or Any Other Sort Of Masters: It Can Only Be Lamed And Enslaved By Them. It Is Said That If You Wash A Cat It Will Never Again Wash Itself. This May Or May Not Be True : What Is Certain Is That If You Teach A Man Anything He Will Never Learn It; And If You Cure Him Of A Disease He Will Be Unable To Cure Himself The Next Time It Attacks Him.

Always Strive To Find Out What To Do By Thinking, Without Asking Anybody. If You Continually Do This, You Will Soon Act Like A Grown-up Woman. For Want Of Doing This, A Very Great Number Of Grown-up People Act Like Children.

No Use Slaving For Me And Then Saying You Want To Be Cared For: Who Cares For A Slave? If You Come Back, Come Back For The Sake Of Good Fellowship; For You’ll Get Nothing Else.

Like All Young Men, You Greatly Exaggerate The Difference Between One Young Woman And Another.

In My Dreams Is A Country Where The State Is The Church And The Church The People: Three In One And One In Three. It Is A Commonwealth In Which Work Is Play And Play Is Life: Three In One And One In Three. It Is A Temple In Which The Priest Is The Worshiper And The Worshiper The Worshipped: Three In One And One In Three. It Is A Godhead In Which All Life Is Human And All Humanity Divine: Three In One And One In Three.

If The Lesser Mind Could Measure The Greater As A Foot-rule Can Measure A Pyramid, There Would Be Finality In Universal Suffrage. As It Is, The Political Problem Remains Unsolved.

It Is Dangerous To Be Sincere Unless You Are Also Stupid.

Plato Long Ago Pointed Out The Importance Of Being Governed By Men With Sufficient Sense Of Responsibility And Comprehension Of Public Duties To Be Very Reluctant To Undertake The Work Of Governing.

Just As The Liar 's Punishment Is, Not In The Least That He Is Not Believed , But That He Cannot Believe Any One Else; So A Guilty Society Can More Easily Be Persuaded That Any Apparently Innocent Act Is Guilty Than That Any Apparently Guilty Act Is Innocent.

Imitation Is Not Just The Sincerest Form Of Flattery - It's The Sincerest Form Of Learning.

What Is Life But A Series Of Inspired Follies.

The Faults Of The Burglar Are The Qualities Of The Financier.

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