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If I Refuse To Allow My Leg To Be Amputated, Its Mortification And My Death May Prove That I Was Wrong; But If I Let The Leg Go, Nobody Can Ever Prove That It Would Not Have Mortified Had I Been Obstinate. Operation Is Therefore The Safe Side For The Surgeon As Well As The Lucrative Side.

-George Bernard Shaw

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If I Refuse To

George Bernard Shaw

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If I Refuse To Allow My Leg To Be Amputated, Its Mortification And My Death May Prove That I Was Wrong; But If I Let The Leg Go, Nobody Can Ever Prove That It Would Not Have Mortified Had I Been Obstinate. Operation Is Therefore The Safe Side For The Surgeon As Well As The Lucrative Side.

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You Can Feel Nothing But A Torment, And Believe Nothing But A Lie. You Will Not Raise Your Head To Look At All The Miracles Of Life That Surround You; But You Will Run Ten Miles To See A Fight Or A Death.

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

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

Telling The Truth

If You Do Not Write For Publication, There Is Little Point In Writing At All.

He Knows Nothing And Thinks He Knows Everything. That Points Clearly To A Political Career.

Indifference Is The Essence Of Inhumanity.

As Long As I Have A Want, I Have A Reason For Living. Satisfaction Is Death.

Think Of The Fierce Energy Concentrated In An Acorn! You Bury It In The Ground, And It Explodes Into An Oak! Bury A Sheep, And Nothing Happens But Decay.

We Are Not Taught To Think Decently On Sex Subjects, And Consequently We Have No Language For Them Except Indecent Language.

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

No Man Ever Believes That The Bible Means What It Says: He Is Always Convinced That It Says What He Means.

As People Get Their Opinions So Largely From The Newspapers They Read, The Corruption Of The Schools Would Not Matter So Much If The Press Were Free. But The Press Is Not Free. As It Costs At Least A Quarter Of A Million Of Money To Establish A Daily Newspaper In London, The Newspapers Are Owned By Rich Men. And They Depend On The Advertisements Of Other Rich Men. Editors And Journalists Who Express Opinions In Print That Are Opposed To The Interests Of The Rich Are Dismissed And Replaced By Subservient Ones.

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.

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

A Great Social Reformer.

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.

When A Heretic Wishes To Avoid Martyrdom He Speaks Of "orthodoxy, True And False" And Demonstrates That The True Is His Heresy.

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.

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

The Most Sincere Form Of Love Is Love For Food

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

Self-denial Is Not A Virtue; It Is Only The Effect Of Prudence On Rascality.

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

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.

Without Art, The Crudeness Of Reality Would Make The World Unbearable.

It Is Nearly 50 Years Since I Was Assured By A Conclave Of Doctors That If I Did Not Eat Meat I Should Die Of Starvation.

Idiots Are Always In Favour Of Inequality Of Income (their Only Chance Of Eminence), And The Really Great In Favour Of Equality.

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

The Sex Relation Is Not A Personal Relation. It Can Be Irresistibly Desired And Rapturously Consummated Between Persons Who Could Not Endure One Another For A Day In Any Other Relation.

A Contract For Better For Worse Is A Contract That Should Not Be Tolerated.

It Is Long And Hard And Painful To Create Life: It Is Short And Easy To Steal The Life Others Have Made.

Golf Is Typical Capitalist Luncay.

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

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

I Am Very Sorry, But I Cannot Learn Languages. I Have Tried Hard, Only To Find That Men Of Ordinary Capacity Can Learn Sanskrit In Less Time That It Takes Me To Buy A German Dictionary

At Present There Is Not A Single Credible Established Religion In The World.

Choose Silence Of All Virtues, For By It You Hear Other Men's Imperfections, And Conceal Your Own.

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

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.

Without Danger I Cannot Be Great. That Is How I Pay For Abel's Blood. Danger And Fear Follow My Steps Everywhere. Without Them Courage Would Have No Sense. And It Is Courage, Courage, Courage That Raises The Blood Of Life To Crimson Splendor.

There Was Only One Virtue, Pugnacity; Only One Vice, Pacifism. That Is An Essential Condition Of War.

The Shot Irishmen Will Now Take Their Places Beside Emmet And The Manchester Martyrs In Ireland, And Beside The Heroes Of Poland And Sérbia And Belgium In Europe; And Nothing In Heaven Or Earth Can Prevent It.

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.

Our Necessities Are Few, But Our Wants Are Endless.

In An Article On Bunyan Lately Published In The "contemporary Review" - The Only Article On The Subject Worth Reading On The Subject I Ever Saw (yes, Thank You, I Am Familiar With Macaulay's Patronizing Prattle About "the Pilgrim's Progress") Etc.

I Can Forgive Alfred Nobel For Having Invented Dynamite, But Only A Fiend In Human Form Could Have Invented The Nobel Prize.

Heaven, As Conventionally Conceived, Is A Place So Inane, So Dull, So Useless, So Miserable That Nobody Has Ever Ventured To Describe A Whole Day In Heaven, Though Plenty Of People Have Described A Day At The Seaside.

The Secret Of Being Miserable Is To Have Leisure To Bother About Whether You Are Happy Or Not. The Cure For It Is Occupation, Because Occupation Means Pre-occupation; And The Pre-occupied Person Is Neither Happy Nor Unhappy, But Simply Alive And Active. That Is Why It Is Necessary To Happiness That One Should Be Tired.

When I See That The Nineteenth Century Has Crowned The Idolatry Of Art With The Deification Of Love, So That Every Poet Is Supposed To Have Pierced To The Holy Of Holies When He Has Announced That Love Is The Supreme, Or The Enough, Or The All, I Feel That Art Was Safer In The Hands Of The Most Fanatical Of Cromwell's Major Generals Than It Will Be If Ever It Gets Into Mine.

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

My Heart, My Heart, Be Whole And Free: Love Is Thine Only Enemy.

The More Things A Man Is Ashamed Of, The More Respectable He Is.

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

Perhaps The Greatest Social Service That Can Be Rendered By Anybody To The Country And To Mankind Is To Bring Up A Family.

Man Is Unique In That He Has Plans, Purpose And Goals Which Require The Need For Criteria Of Choice. The Need For Ethical Value Is Within Man Whose Future May Largely Be Determined By The Choice He Make

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

The Capacity Of Any Conqueror Is More Likely Than Not To Be An Illusion Produced By The Incapacity Of His Adversary.

You Can Rave About Stravinsky Without The Slightest Risk Of Being Classified As A Lunatic By The Next Generation .

If Associations To Control Burglary And Murder Were Tolerated We Should Take It For Granted That The Members Should All Be Burglers And Murderers.

He Who Bears The Brand Of Cain Shall Rule The Earth.

If You Cannot Have What You Believe In You Must Believe In What You Have.

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.

A Child Hasn't A Grown-up Person's Appetite For Affection. A Little Of It Goes A Long Way With Them; And They Like A Good Imitation Of It Better Than The Real Thing, As Every Nurse Knows.

Censorship Ends In Logical Completeness When Nobody Is Allowed To Read Any Books Except The Books That Nobody Can Read.

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.

We Are Told That When Jehovah Created The World He Saw That It Was Good What Would He Say Now

People Get Nothing Out Of Books But What They Bring To Them.

It Is A Woman's Business To Get Married As Soon As Possible, And A Man's To Keep Unmarried As Long As He Can.

Must Then A Christ Perish In Torment In Every Age To Save Those That Have No Imagination.

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

Don't Ask Me For Promises Until I Know What I Am Promising.

If You Eliminate Smoking And Gambling, You Will Be Amazed To Find That Almost All An Englishman's Pleasures Can Be, And Mostly Are, Shared By His Dog.

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

A Man Without An Address Is A Vagabond; A Man With Two Addresses Is A Libertine.

All Problems Are Finally Scientific Problems.

Girls, Like Men, Want To Be Petted, Pitied, And Made Much Of, When They Are Diffident, In Low Spirits, Or In Unrequited Love. These Are Services Which The Weak Cannot Render To The Strong And Which The Strong Will Not Render To The Weak, Except When There Is Also A Difference Of Sex.

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.

Which Painting In The National Gallery Would I Save If There Was A Fire? The One Nearest The Door Of Course.

The Man Who Writes About Himself And His Own Time Is The Only Man Who Writes About All People And About All Time.

Although I Cannot Lay An Egg, I Am A Very Good Judge Of Omelettes

I Showed My Appreciation Of My Native Land In The Usual Irish Way: By Getting Out Of It As Soon As I Possibly Could.

A Native American Elder Once Described His Own Inner Struggles In This Manner: Inside Of Me There Are Two Dogs. One Of The Dogs Is Mean And Evil. The Other Dog Is Good. The Mean Dog Fights The Good Dog All The Time. When Asked Which Dog Wins, He Reflected For A Moment And Replied, The One I Feed The Most.

Patriotism Is A Pernicious, Psychopathic Form Of Idiocy.

What Is The Matter With Universities Is That The Students Are School Children, Whereas It Is Of The Very Essence Of University Education That They Should Be Adults.

This Is The True Joy Of Life-the Being Used For A Purpose Recognized By Yourself As A Mighty One, The Being Thoroughly Worn Out Before You Are Thrown To The Scrap-heap; The Being A Force Of Nature Instead Of A Feverish, Selfish Clod Of Ailments And Grievances.

The Lesson Intended By An Author Is Hardly Ever The Lesson The World Chooses To Learn From His Book.

This Is My Father. Try What You Can With Him! He Won't Listen To Me, Because He Remembers What A Fool I Was When I Was A Baby.

It Is Assumed That The Woman Must Wait, Motionless, Until She Is Wooed. That Is How The Spider Waits For The Fly.

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.

This Planet Is Obviously Being Used As An Insane Asylum By Other Planets.

The Wheels Are Turning, But The Hamsters Are All Dead. Make It Idiot-proof And Someone Will Make A Better Idiot. I Learned Long Ago, Never To Wrestle With A Pig, You Get Dirty; And Besides, The Pig Likes It.

We Are Sick Of War, We Don't Want To Fight, And Yet We Gorge Ourselves Upon The Dead.

Vegetarian Diet

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

The Man With A Toothache Thinks Everyone Happy Whose Teeth Are Sound. The Poverty-stricken Man Makes The Same Mistake About The Rich Man.

Remember That The Progress Of The World Depends On Your Knowing Better Than Your Elders.

Unless The People Can Choose Their Leaders And Rulers, And Can Revoke Their Choice At Intervals Long Enough To Test Their Measuresby Results, The Government Will Be A Tyranny Exercised In The Interests Of Whatever Classes Or Castes Or Mobs Or Cliques Have This Choice.

Imprisonment Is As Irrevocable As Death.

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

The Stock Actor Is A Stage Calamity

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

Every Man Over Forty Is A Scoundrel.

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.

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

Style Is Effectiveness Of Assertion.

Any Belief Worth Having Must Survive Doubt

The Public Want Actresses, Because They Think All Actresses Bad. They Don't Want Music Or Poetry Because They Know That Both Are Good. So Actors And Actresses Thrive And Poets And Composers Starve.

The Way To Deal With Worldly People Is To Frighten Them By Repeating Their Scandalous Whisperings Aloud.

After All, The Wrong Road Always Leads Somewhere.

Whether You Think Jesus Was God Or Not, You Must Admit He Was A First-rate Political Economist.

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

He Who Can, Does. He Who Cannot, Teaches.

People Who Are Hard, Grasping And Always Ready To Take Advantage Of Their Neighbors Become Very Rich.

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

All Professions Are Conspiracies Against The Laity.

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

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.

Human Misery Is So Appalling Nowadays That If We Allowed Ourselves To Dwell On It We Should Only Add Imaginary Miseries Of Our Own To The Real Miseries Of Others Without Doing Them Any Good.

Though The Life Force Supplies Us With Its Own Purpose, It Has No Other Brains To Work With Than Those It Has Painfully And Imperfectly Evolved In Our Heads.

Eternal Is The Fact That The Human Creature Born In Ireland And Brought Up In Its Air Is Irish. I Have Lived For Twenty Years In Ireland And For Seventy-two In England; But The Twenty Came First And In Britain I Am Still A Foreigner And Shall Die One.

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

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.

The Camera Can Represent Flesh So Superbly That, If I Dared, I Would Never Photograph A Figure Without Asking That Figure To Take Its Clothes Off.

Social Questions Are Too Sectional, Too Topical, Too Temporal To Move A Man To The Mighty Effort Which Is Needed To Produce Greatpoetry. Prison Reform May Nerve Charles Reade To Produce An Effective And Businesslike Prose Melodrama; But It Could Never Produce Hamlet, Faust, Or Peer Gynt.

It's A Pity Youth Is Wasted On The Young.

It's Easier To Replace A Dead Man Than A Good Picture.

Those Who Won't Hesitate To Vivisect, Won't Hesitate To Lie About It As Well.

I Don't. I Look My Age; And I Am My Age. It Is The Other People Who Look Older Than They Are. What Can You Expect From People Who Eat Corpses And Drink Spirits?

In Your Salvation Shelter I Saw Poverty, Misery, Cold And Hunger. You Gave Them Bread And Treacle And Dreams Of Heaven. I Give From Thirty Shillings A Week To Twelve Thousand A Year. They Find Their Own Dreams; But I Look After The Drainage.

A Cigarette Is A Pinch Of Tobacco Rolled In Paper With Fire At One End And A Fool At The Other.

Clever And Attractive Women Do Not Want To Vote; They Are Willing To Let Men Govern As Long As They Govern Men.

A Man Is Like A Phonograph With Half-a-dozen Records. You Soon Get Tired Of Them All; And Yet You Have To Sit At Table Whilst He Reels Them Off To Every New Visitor.

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

The Great Danger Of Conversion In All Ages Has Been That When The Religion Of The High Mind Is Offered To The Lower Mind, The Lower Mind, Feeling Its Fascination Without Understanding It, And Being Incapable Of Rising To It, Drags It Down To Its Level By Degrading It.

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

I Shall Always Be A Flower Girl To Professor Higgins, Because He Always Treats Me As A Flower Girl, And Always Will; But I Know I Can Be A Lady To You, Because You Always Treat Me As A Lady, And Always Will.

Those Who Talk Most About The Blessings Of Marriage And The Constancy Of Its Vows Are The Very People Who Declare That If The Chain Were Broken And The Prisoners Left Free To Choose, The Whole Social Fabric Would Fly Asunder. You Cannot Have The Argument Both Ways. If The Prisoner Is Happy, Why Lock Him In? If He Is Not, Why Pretend That He Is?

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

My Religious Convictions And Scientific Views Cannot At Present Be More Specifically Defined Than As Those Of A Believer In Creative Revolution. I Desire That No Public Monument Or Work Of Art Or Inscription Or Sermon Or Ritual Service Commemorating Me Shall Suggest That I Accepted The Tenets Peculiar To Any Established Church Or Denomination Nor Take The Form Of A Cross Or Any Other Instrument Of Torture Or Symbol Of Blood Sacrifice.

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

Reminiscences Make One Feel So Deliciously Aged And Sad.

Man Is The Only Animals Of Which I Am Thoroughly And Cravenly Afraid.

Literature Is Like Any Other Trade; You Will Never Sell Anything Unless You Go To The Right Shop.

In A Hospital They Throw You Out Into The Street Before You Are Half Cured, But In A Nursing Home They Don't Let You Out Till You Are Dead.

Money Is Indeed The Most Important Thing In The World; And All Sound And Successful Personal And National Morality Should Have This Fact For Its Basis.

An Asylum For The Sane Would Be Empty In America.

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

The Englishmen Is At His Best On The Links And At His Worst In The Cabinet.

Consistency Is The Enemy Of Enterprise, Just As Symmetry Is The Enemy Of Art.

The One Point On Which All Women Are In Furious Secret Rebellion Against The Existing Law Is The Saddling Of The Right To A Child With The Obligation To Become The Servant Of A Man.

History, Sir, Will Tell Lies As Usual.

God Is On The Side Of The Big Battalions.

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.

A Serious Illness Or A Death Advertises The Doctor Exactly As A Hanging Advertises The Barrister Who Defended The Person Hanged.

Serious Illness

Better Never Than Late.

It's All That The Young Can Do For The Old, To Shock Them And Keep Them Up To Date.

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

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.

Like Fingerprints, All Marriages Are Different.

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

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.

Jesus Remains Unshaken As The Practical Man; And We Stand Exposed As The Fools, The Blunderers, The Unpractical Visionaries.

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.

I Tell You That As Long As I Can Conceive Something Better Than Myself I Cannot Be Easy Unless I Am Striving To Bring It Into Existence Or Clearing The Way For It.

There Is No Sincerer Love Than The Love Of Food.

Those Who Can’t Change Their Minds Can’t Change Anything.

People Changing

As People Get Their Opinions So Largely From The Newspapers They Read... But The Press Is Not Free, The Newspapers Are Owned By Rich Men.

A Critic Recently Described Me, With Deadly Acuteness, As Having 'a Kindly Dislike Of My Fellow-creatures.' Perhaps Dread Would Have Been Nearer The Mark Than Dislike; For Man Is The Only Animal Of Which I Am Thoroughly And Cravenly Afraid.

If The Wicked Flourish And The Fittest Survive, Nature Must Be The God Of Rascals.

Syllables Govern The World.

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

The Difference Between A Lady And A Flower Girl Is Not How She Behaves, But How She’s Treated.

It Is Not That I Am So Clever; It Is That Everyone Else Is So Stupid.

Taxes Are The Chief Business Of A Conqueror Of The World.

Put An Irishman On The Spit And You Can Always Get Another Irishman To Turn Him.

Ireland And The Irish

The Statesman Cannot Govern Without Stability Of Belief, True Or False.

If All You Are Going To Do In Life Are The Things That Are Convenient And Comfortable, The Great Things Never Get Done.

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

The Real Pleasure Of One's Life Is The Devotion To A Great Objective Of One's Consideration.

All Progress Means War With Society.

Progress Of Society

Englishmen Never Will Be Slaves; They Are Free To Do Whatever The Government And Public Opinion Allow Them.

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

My Method Is To Take The Utmost Trouble To Find The Right Thing To Say, And Then To Say It With The Utmost Levity.

Public Speaking

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

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

If Despotism Failed Only For Want Of A Capable Benevolent Despot, What Chance Has Democracy, Which Requires A Whole Population Of Capable Voters.

I Don't Like The Idea Of Killing My Fellow Creatures In Order To Eat Their Dead Bodies.

What We Call Education And Culture Is For The Most Part Nothing But The Substitution Of Reading For Experience, Of Literature For Life, Of The Obsolete Fictitious For The Contemporary Real.

Don't Waste Time Collecting Other People's Autographs; Rather Devote It To Making Your Own Autograph Worth Collecting.

Even The Youngest Of Us May Be Wrong Sometimes.

The Moment We Face It Frankly We Are Driven To The Conclusion That The Community Has A Right To Put A Price On The Right To Live In It

Imagination Is The Beginning Of Creation.

Nobody Supposes That Doctors Are Less Virtuous Than Judges; But A Judge Whose Salary And Reputation Depended On Whether The Verdict Was For Plaintiff Or Defendant, Prosecutor Or Prisoner, Would Be As Little Trusted As A General In The Pay Of The Enemy.

Ye Poor Posterity, Think Not That Ye Are The First. Other Fools Before Ye Have Seen The Sun Rise And Set, And The Moon Change Her Shape And Her Hour. As They Were So Ye Are; And Yet Not So Great; For The Pyramids My People Built Stand To This Day; Whilst The Dustheaps On Which Ye Slave, And Which Ye Call Empires, Scatter In The Wind Even As Ye Pile Your Dead Sons' Bodies On Them To Make Yet More Dust.

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.

Dancing Is A Perpendicular Expression Of A Horizontal Desire.

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

The Thought Of Two Thousand People Crunching Celery At The Same Time Horrified Me.

Socialism Is The Same As Communism, Only Better English.

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.

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