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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.

-George Bernard Shaw

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I Wish To Boast

George Bernard Shaw

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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.

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Do Not Do Unto Others As You Expect They Should Do Unto You. Their Tastes May Not Be The Same.

For Four Wicked Centuries The World Has Dreamed This Foolish Dream Of Efficiency; And The End Is Not Yet. But The End Will Come.

Man Can Climb To The Highest Summits, But He Cannot Dwell There Long.

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

When An Apparent Miracle Happened.it Proved Divine Mission To The Credulous, And Proved A Contract With The Devil To The Skeptical.

Most People Do Not Pray; They Only Beg.

A Miracle Is An Event Which Creates Faith. That Is The Purpose And Nature Of Miracles. Frauds Deceive. An Event Which Creates Faith Does Not Deceive: Therefore It Is Not A Fraud, But A Miracle.

We Don't Bother Much About Dress And Manners In England, Because As A Nation We Don't Dress Well And We've No Manners.

The Truth Is The One Thing That Nobody Will Believe.

People Who Say It Cannot Be Done Should Not Interrupt Those Who Are Doing It.

We Throw The Whole Drudgery Of Creation On One Sex, And Then Imply That No Female Of Any Delicacy Would Initiate Any Effort In That Direction.

Unbounded Hopes Were Placed On Each Successive Extension Of The Electoral Franchise, Culminating In The Enfranchisement Of Women.these Hopes Have Been Disappointed, Because The Voters, Male And Female, Being Politically Untrained And Uneducated, Have (a) No Grasp Of Constructive Measures; (b) Loathe Taxation As Such; (c) Dislike Being Governed At All; And (d) Dread And Resent Any Extension Of Official Interference As An Encroachment On Their Personal Liberty.

Of The Two Lots, The Woman's Lot Of Perpetual Motherhood, And The Man's Of Perpetual Babyhood, I Prefer The Man's.

I Hope You Have Lost Your Good Looks, For While They Last Any Fool Can Adore You, And The Adoration Of Fools Is Bad For The Soul. No, Give Me A Ruined Complexion And A Lost Figure And Sixteen Chins On A Farmyard Of Crow's Feet And An Obvious Wig. Then You Shall See Me Coming Out Strong.

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

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 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

The Only Secrets Are The Secrets That Keep Themselves.

Keeping Secrets

Discussing Vaccination With A Doctor Is Like Discussing Vegetarianism With A Butcher.

My Opportunities Were Still There, Nay, They Multiplied Tenfold; But The Strength And Youth To Cope With Them Began To Fail, And To Need Eking Out With The Shifty Cunning Of Experience.

A Married Man Forms Married Habits And Becomes Dependent On Marriage Just As A Sailor Becomes Dependent On The Sea.

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

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

I'm Only A Beer Teetotaler, Not A Champagne Teetotaler; I Don't Like Beer.

When You Want To Put Something Into Your Part That Is Not In The Play, You Must Ask The Author-or Some Other Author-to Lead Up To The Interpolation For You. Never Forget That The Effect Of A Line May Depend Not On Its Delivery, But On Something Said Earlier In The Play, Either By Somebody Else Or By Yourself, And That If You Change It, It May Be Necessary To Change The Whole First Act As Well.

Only Where There Is Pecuniary Equality Can The Distinction Of Merit Stand Out.

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.

Unless The Law Of Marriage Were First Made Human, It Could Never Become Divine.

I Dislike Feeling At Home When I Am Abroad.

The Salvation Of The World Depends On The Men Who Will Not Take Evil Good-humouredly, And Whose Laughter Destroys The Fool Instead Of Encouraging Him.

The Truth Is, Hardly Any Of Us Have Ethical Energy Enough For More Than One Really Inflexible Point Of Honor.

The Surest Way To Ruin A Man Who Doesn't Know How To Handle Money Is To Give Him Some.

I Am Sorry To Have To Introduce The Subject Of Christmas. It Is An Indecent Subject; A Cruel, Gluttonous Subject; A Drunken, Disorderly Subject; A Wasteful, Disastrous Subject; A Wicked, Cadging, Lying, Filthy, Blasphemous And Demoralizing Subject. Christmas Is Forced On 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; And Anyone Who Looked Back To It Would Be Turned Into A Pillar Of Greasy Sausages.

An Actress Is Not A Lady; At Least, When She Is, She Is Not An Actress.

You Can Easily Find People Who Are Ten Times As Rich At Sixty As They Were At Twenty But Not One Of Them Will Tell You That They Are Ten Times As Happy

What A Heartbreaking Job It Is Trying To Combine Authors For Their Own Protection... The First Lesson I Learned Was That When You Take The Field For The Authors You Will Be Safer Without A Breastplate Than Without A Backplate.

Islam Is The Best Religion And Muslims Are The Worst Followers

I Want To Be All Used Up When I Die.

Man Is The Only Animal Which Esteems Itself Rich In Proportion To The Number And Voracity Of Its Parasites.

All Industries Are Brought Under The Control Of Such People [film Producers] By Capitalism. If The Capitalists Let Themselves Be Seduced From Their Pursuit Of Profits To The Enchantments Of Art, They Would Be Bankrupt Before They Knew Where They Were. You Cannot Combine The Pursuit Of Money With The Pursuit Of Art.

All Great Truth First Starts As Blasphemy.

There Is A Terrible Truthfulness About Photography That Sometimes Makes A Thing Look Ridiculous.

I Am Justified. For I Chose Wisdom And The Knowledge Of Good And Evil ; And Now There Is No Evil; And Wisdom And Good Are One. It Is Enough.

Hollywood Keeps Before Its Child Audiences A String Of Glorified Young Heroes, Everyone Of Whom Is An Unhesitating And Violent Anarchist. His One Answer To Everything That Annoys Him Or Disparages His Country Or His Parents Or His Young Lady Or His Personal Code Of Manly Conduct Is To Give The Offender A "sock" In The Jaw.... My Observation Leads Me To Believe That It Is Not The Virtuous People Who Are Good At Socking Jaws.

I Believe In Michelangelo, Velasquez, And Rembrandt; In The Might Of Design, The Mystery Of Color, The Redemption Of All Things By Beauty Everlasting, And The Message Of Art That Has Made These Hands Blessed. Amen. Amen.

What You Are To Do Without Me I Cannot Imagine.

In Order To Fully Realize How Bad A Popular Play Can Be, It Is Necessary To See It Twice.

Treat Persons Who Profess To Be Able To Cure Disease As You Treat Fortune Tellers.

Every Dream Is A Prophecy: Every Jest Is An Earnest In The Womb Of Time.

If History Repeats Itself, And The Unexpected Always Happens, How Incapable Must Man Be Of Learning From Experience.

The Sex Illusion Is Not A Fixed Quantity: Not What Mathematicians Call A Constant. It Varies From Zero In My Wife's Case To Madness In That Of Our Stepsister.

In Literature The Ambition Of The Novice Is To Acquire The Literary Language; The Struggle Of The Adept Is To Get Rid Of It.

Music Is The Brandy Of The Damned.

What Is The Use Of Straining After An Amiable View Of Things, When A Cynical View Is Most Likely To Be The True One?.

The Ideal Love Affair Should Be Conducted By Post.

Build A System That Even A Fool Can Use, And Only A Fool Will Want To Use It.

Use It Or Lose It

A Man Who Loses His Money Gains, At The Least, Experience, And Sometimes, Something Better.

You'll Never Have A Quiet World Till You Knock The Patriotism Out Of The Human Race.

Use Your Health, Even To The Point Of Wearing It Out.

Inspirational Health

When The Military Man Approaches, The World Locks Up Its Spoons And Packs Off Its Womankind.

As Long As More People Will Pay Admission To A Theater To See A Naked Body Than To See A Naked Brain, The Drama Will Languish.

An Author Who Gives A Manager Or Publisher Any Rights In His Work Except Those Immediately And Specifically Required For Its Publication Or Performance Is For Business Purposes An Imbecile.

The Roulette Table Pays Nobody Except Him That Keeps It. Nevertheless A Passion For Gaming Is Common, Though A Passion For Keeping Roulette Tables Is Unknown.

There Is Not One Single Established Religion That An Intelligent, Educated Man Can Believe.

Morality Consists Of Suspecting Other People Of Not Being Legally Married.

Don't Wait For The Right Opportunity: Create It.

The Most Tragic Thing In The World Is A Man Of Genius Who Is Not A Man Of Honor.

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 Knew If I Waited Around Long Enough Something Like This Would Happen.

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

The Notion That Nature Does Not Proceed By Jumps Is Only One Of The Budget Of Plausible Lies That We Call Classical Education. Nature Always Proceeds By Jumps. She May Spend Twenty Thousand Years Making Up Her Mind To Jump; But When She Makes It Up At Last, The Jump Is Big Enough To Take Us Into A New Age.

Why Not Give Christianity A Trial?

Do Not Try To Live Forever. You Will Not Succeed.

I Don't Know What To Say About This Book. The Experience On Which It Is Founded Is So Extraordinary, That An Honest Record Of It Should Be Preserved . . . But It Would Have Driven Me Mad; And I Am Not Sure That The Author Came Out Of It Without A Slight Derangement.

Be Like The Sun And Meadow, Which Are Not In The Least Concerned About The Coming Winter.

There Have Been Summits Of Civilization At Which Heretics Like Socrates , Who Was Killed Because He Was Wiser Than His Neighbors, Have Not Been Tortured, But Ordered To Kill Themselves In The Most Painless Manner Known To Their Judges. But From That Summit There Was A Speedy Relapse Into Our Present Savagery.

The World Was To Shakespeare A Great Stage Of Fools On Which He Was Utterly Bewildered. His Pregnant Observations Of Life Are Not Coordinated Into Any Philosophy.

Let A Short Act Of Parliament Be Passed, Placing All Street Musicians Outside The Protection Of The Law, So That Any Citizen May Assail Them With Stones, Sticks, Knives, Pistols Or Bombs Without Incurring Any Penalties.

I'm Not A Teacher: Only A Fellow Traveler Of Whom You Asked The Way. I Pointed Ahead - Ahead Of Myself As Well As You.

Nothing Makes A Man So Selfish As Work.

Somemenare Bornkings; And Someare Bornstatesmen. The Two Are Seldom The Same.

I Like A Bit Of Mongrel Myself, Whether It's A Man Or A Dog.

In Gambling The Many Must Lose In Order That The Few May Win.

There Are No Perfectly Honorable Men; But Every True Man Has One Main Point Of Honor And A Few Minor Ones.

Americans Adore Me And Will Go On Adoring Me Until I Say Something Nice About Them.

The Whole World Is Strewn With Snares, Traps, Gins And Pitfalls For The Capture Of Men By Women.

Marriage Is Tolerable Enough In Its Way If Youre Easygoing And Dont Expect Too Much From It. But It Doesnt Bear Thinking About.

If I Bind The Future I Bind My Will. If I Bind My Will I Strangle Creation.

The Policy Of Letting Things Alone, In The Practical Sense That The Government Should Never Interfere With Business Or Go Into Business Itself, Is Called Laisser-faire By Economists And Politicians. It Has Broken Down So Completely In Practice That It Is Now Discredited; But It Was All The Fashion In Politics A Hundred Years Ago, And Is Still Influentially Advocated By Men Of Business And Their Backers Who Naturally Would Like To Be Allowed To Make Money As They Please Without Regard To The Interest Of The Public.

The Schoolmaster Is The Person Who Takes The Children Off The Parents' Hands For A Consideration. That Is To Say, He Establishes A Child Prison, Engages A Number Of Employee Schoolmasters As Turnkeys, And Covers Up The Essential Cruelty And Unnaturalness Of The Situation By Torturing The Children If They Do Not Learn, And Calling This Process, Which Is Within The Capacity Of Any Fool Or Blackguard, By The Sacred Name Of Teaching.

I Don't Believe In Morality . I'm A Disciple Of Bernard Shaw.

Emotional Excitement Reaches Men Through Tea, Tobacco, Opium, Whisky, And Religion.

Like Fingerprints, All Marriages Are Different.

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

Those Who Are Looking For Paradise On Earth Should Come And See Dubrovnik.

Paradise On Earth

We Want A Few Mad People Now. See Where The Sane Ones Have Landed Us!

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.

Murder And Capital Punishment Are Not Opposites That Cancel One Another, But Similars That Breed Their Kind. It Is The Deed That Teaches Not The Name We Give It.

My Way Of Joking Is To Tell The Truth

O Lord! I Don't Know Which Is The Worst Of The Country, The Walking Or The Sitting At Home With Nothing To Do.

Every Doctor Will Allow A Colleague To Decimate A Whole Countryside Sooner Than Violate The Bond Of Professional Etiquette By Giving Him Away.

To Endure The Pain Of Living, We All Drug Ourselves More Or Less With Gin, With Literature, With Superstitions, With Romance, With Idealism, Political, Sentimental, And Moral, With Every Possible Preparation Of That Universal Hashish: Imagination.

Anarchism Is A Game At Which The Police Can Beat You.

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.

Get Married, But Never To A Man Who Is Home All Day.

The Danger Of Crippling Thought, The Danger Of Obstructing The Formation Of The Public Mind By Specially Suppressing ... Representations Is Far Greater Than Any Real Danger That There Is From Such Representations.

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

The Most Anxious Man In A Prison Is The Governor.

Who Is This Baby Ruth? And What Does She Do?

My Own Education Has Been Entirely Controversial: That Is Why I Know What I Am Writing About; And Appear Eccentric To Dogmatically Educated Old School Ties Whose Heads Are Stuffed With Obsolete Shibboleths.

The Road To Ignorance Is Paved With Good Editions. Only The Illiterate Can Afford To Buy Good Books Now.

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.

There Is Only One Universal Passion Fear.

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.

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.

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

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

It Exasperated Her To Think That The Dungeon In Which She Had Languished For So Many Unhappy Years Had Been Unlocked All The Time, And That The Impulses She Had So Carefully Struggled With And Stifled For The Sake Of Keeping Well With Society, Were Precisely Those By Which Alone She Could Have Come Into Any Sort Of Sincere Human Contact.

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

People Get Tired Of Everything, And Of Nothing Sooner Than Of What They Most Like.

I Learned More From The First Stupid Woman Who Fell In Love With Me Than Ever My Brains Taught Me.

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

Audacious Ribald: Your Laughter Will Finish In Hideous Boredom Before Morning.

I Hope You Have Lost Your Good Looks, For While They Last Any Fool Can Adore You, And The Adoration Of Fools Is Bad For The Soul.

It Is The Mark Of A Truly Intelligent Person To Be Moved By Statistics.

There Is No Accomplishment So Easy To Acquire As Politeness And None More Profitable.

Every Man Deserves To Be Judged In The Context Of His Times.

Freedom, My Good Girl, Means Being Able To Count On How Other People Will Behave.

The Most Intolerable Pain Is Produced By Prolonging The Keenest Pleasure.

If The English Can Survive Their Food, They Can Survive Anything.

We Mustn't Be Stiff And Stand-off, You Know. We Must Be Thoroughly Democratic, And Patronize Everybody Without Distinction Of Class.

If More Than Ten Percent Of The Public Likes A Painting, It Should Be Burned.

Hell Is Full Of Musical Amateurs.

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.

If You Do Not Say A Thing In An Irritating Way, You May As Well Not Say It At All Because People Will Not Trouble Themselves About Anything That Does Not Trouble Them.

Geniuses Are Horrid, Intolerant, Easily Offended, Sleeplessly Self-conscious Men, Who Expect Their Wives To Be Angels With No Further Business In Life Than To Pet And Worship Their Husbands. Even At The Best They Are Not Comfortable Men To Live With; And A Perfect Husband Is One Who Is Perfectly Comfortable To Live With.

A Man's Interest In The World Is Only An Overflow From His Interest In Himself.

Indifference Is The Essence Of Inhumanity.

Decency Is Indecency's Conspiracy Of Silence

The Best Bought-up Children Are Those Who Have Seen Thier Parents As They Are. Hypocrisy Is Not The First Duty Of A Parent.

I Have Not Wasted My Life Trifling With Literary Fools In Taverns, As Johnson Did, When He Should Have Been Shaking England With The Thunder Of His Spirit

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

Death And Dying

The Criminal Law Is No Use To Decent People.

I Have My Own Soul. My Own Spark Of Divine Fire.

Nowadays A Parlor Maid As Ignorant As Queen Victoria Was When She Came To The Throne Would Be Classed As Mentally Defective.

I'm An Atheist And I Thank God For It.

Every Step Of Progress Means A Duty Repudiated, And A Scripture Torn Up.

When Domestic Servants Are Treated As Human Beings It Is Not Worth While To Keep Them.

A Photographer Is Like A Cod, Which Produces A Million Eggs In Order That One May Reach Maturity.

Vivisection Is A Social Evil Because If It Advances Human Knowledge, It Does So At The Expense Of Human Character.

Justice Is Impartiality. Only Strangers Are Impartial.

Justice Is Justice Though It's Always Delayed And Finally Done Only By Mistake.

A Veteran Journalist Has Never Had Time To Think Twice Before He Writes.

Vulgarity Is A Necessary Part Of A Complete Author's Equipment; And The Clown Is Sometimes The Best Part Of The Circus.

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.

What Really Flatters A Man Is That You Think Him Worth Flattering.

Remember That You Are A Human Being With A Soul And The Divine Gift Of Articulate Speech: That Your Native Language Is The Language Of Shakespeare And Milton And The Bible; And Don't Sit There Crooning Like A Bilious Pigeon.

Native Language

The Only Way For A Woman To Provide For Herself Decently Is For Her To Be Good To Some Man That Can Afford To Be Good To Her.

There Is At Bottom Only One Genuinely Scientific Treatment For All Diseases, And That Is To Stimulate The Phagocytes.

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 Skepticism And Activity.

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

I Never Thought Much Of The Courage Of A Lion Tamer. Inside The Cage He Is At Least Safe From People.

There Is Only One Religion, Though There Are A Hundred Versions Of It.

We Educate One Another; And We Cannot Do This If Half Of Us Consider The Other Half Not Good Enough To Talk To.

Not Good Enough

No King On Earth Is As Safe In His Job As A Trade Union Official. There Is Only One Thing That Can Get Him Sacked; And That Is Drink. Not Even That, As Long As He Doesn't Actually Fall Down.

The Trouble With Her Is That She Lacks The Power Of Conversation But Not The Power Of Speech.

The Most Revolutionary Invention Of The Nineteenth Century Was The Artificial Sterilization Of Marriage.

You Don't Expect Me To Know What To Say About A Play When I Don't Know Who The Author Is, Do You? . . . If It's By A Good Author, It's A Good Play, Naturally. That Stands To Reason.

The Popular Definition Of Tragedy Is Heavy Drama In Which Everyone Is Killed In The Last Act, Comedy Being Light Drama In Which Everyone Is Married In The Last Act.

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.

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

Life Would Be Tolerable But For Its Amusements.

You Sometimes Have To Answer A Woman According To Her Womanliness, Just As You Have To Answer A Fool According To His Folly.

He Never Does A Proper Thing Without Giving An Improper Reason For It.

Heartbreak Is Life Educating Us.

Nationalism Must Now Be Added To The Refuse Pile Of Superstitions. We Are Now Citizens Of The World, And The Man Who Divides The Race Into Elect Irishmen And Reprobate Foreign Devils (especially Englishmen) Had Better Live On The Blaskets Where He Can Admire Himself Without Disturbance.

Hell Is A Place Where You Have Nothing To Do But Amuse Yourself.

Make Money And The Whole Nation Will Conspire To Call You A Gentleman.

The Minorities Are Sometimes Right. The Majorities Never.

A Life Spent Making Mistakes Is Not Only More Honorable, But More Useful Than A Life Spent Doing Nothing.

The Real Brahms Is Nothing More Than A Sentimental Voluptuary. Rather Tiresomely Addicted To Dressing Himself Up As Handel Or Beethoven And Making A Prolonged And Intolerable Noise.

The More Ignorant Men Are, The More Convinced Are They That Their Little Parish And Their Little Chapel Is An Apex To Which Civilization And Philosophy Has Painfully Struggled Up The Pyramid Of Time From A Desert Of Savagery.

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.

A Lifetime Of Happiness! No Man Alive Could Bear It: It Would Be Hell On Earth.

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

What Is Virtue But The Trade Unionism Of The Married?

Wise Kings Wear Shabby Clothes, And Leave The Gold Lace To The Drum Major.

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.

Forgive Him, For He Believes That The Customs Of His Tribe Are The Laws Of Nature!

Gentle Jesus, Meek And Mild' Is A Snivelling Modern Invention, With No Warrant In The Gospels.

What Is Both Surprising And Delightful Is That The Spectators Are Allowed, And Even Expected, To Join In The Vocal Part Of The Game...there Is No Reason Why The Field Should Not Try To Put The Batsman Off His Stroke At The Critical Moment By Neatly Timed Disparagements Of His Wife's Fidelity And His Mother's Respectability.

If You Cannot Attain Knowledge Without Torturing A Dog, You Must Do Without Knowledge.

The Buried Truth Germinates And Breaks Through To The Light.

The English Have No Respect For Their Language, And Will Not Teach Their Children To Speak It.

We Are Made Wise Not By The Recollection Of Our Past, But By The Responsibility For Our Future.

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.

Assasination On The Scaffold Is The Worst Form Of Assasination, Because There It Is Invested With The Approval Of Society.

There Is Nothing On Earth Intended For Innocent People So Horrible As A School.

You Must All Know Half A Dozen People At Least Who Are No Use In This World, Who Are More Trouble Than They Are Worth. Just Put Them There And Say Sir, Or Madam, Now Will You Be Kind Enough To Justify Your Existence? If You Can't Justify Your Existence, If You're Not Pulling Your Weight In The Social Boat, If You're Not Producing As Much As You Consume Or Perhaps A Little More, Then, Clearly, We Cannot Use The Organizations Of Our Society For The Purpose Of Keeping You Alive, Because Your Life Does Not Benefit Us And It Can't Be Of Very Much Use To Yourself.

Any Belief Worth Having Must Survive Doubt

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