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It Is Necessary For The Welfare Of Society That Genius Should Be Privileged To Utter Sedition, To Blaspheme, To Outrage Good Taste, To Corrupt The Youthful Mind, And Generally To Scandalize One's Uncles.

-George Bernard Shaw

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It Is Necessary For

George Bernard Shaw

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It Is Necessary For The Welfare Of Society That Genius Should Be Privileged To Utter Sedition, To Blaspheme, To Outrage Good Taste, To Corrupt The Youthful Mind, And Generally To Scandalize One's Uncles.

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We Know There Is Intention And Purpose In The Universe, Because There Is Intention And Purpose In Us.

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Great Art Is Never Produced For Its Own Sake. It Is Too Difficult To Be Worth The Effort.

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While We Have Prisons It Matters Little Which Of Us Occupy The Cells.

There Is Nothing So Bad Or So Good That You Will Not Find Englishmen Doing It; But You Will Never Find An Englishman In The Wrong. He Does Everything On Principle.

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Have You No Morals, Man?' 'can't Afford Them,governor.

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If All The Economists Were Laid End To End, They'd Never Reach A Conclusion.

I Aint Such A Mug As To Put Up My Children To All I Know Myself.

Every Child Has A Right To Its Own Bent. . . . It Has A Right To Find Its Own Way And Go Its Own Way, Whether That Way Seems Wise Or Foolish To Others, Exactly As An Adult Has. It Has A Right To Privacy As To Its Own Doings And Its Own Affairs As Much As If It Were Its Own Father.

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.

The Only Way To Avoid Being Miserable Is Not To Have Enough Leisure To Wonder Whether You Are Happy Or Not.

The British Soldier Can Stand Up To Anything Except The British War Office.

British Soldiers

Activity Is The Only Road To Knowledge.

I Dislike Feeling At Home When I Am Abroad.

The Art Of Manipulating Public Opinion, Which Is A Necessary Art For The Democratic Politician, And, Like Other Arts, Is Sometimespractised With Greater Virtuosity By Knaves Than By Honest Men (who Are Apt To Disdain It), Has A Different Technique In Different Countries. For Instance, In England We Excel In Whitewashing: In America They Excel In Tarring And Feathering. We Strain Our Nerves And Stretch Our Consciences To Avoid A Scandal: Americans Do The Same To Make One.

We Must Not Stay As We Are, Doing Always What Was Done Last Time, Or We Shall Stick In The Mud. Yet Neither Must We Undertake A New World As Catastrophic Utopians, And Wreck Our Civilization In Our Hurry To Mend It.

The Philosopher Is Nature's Pilot. And There You Have Our Difference: To Be In Hell Is To Drift: To Be In Heaven Is To Steer.

Both Optimists And Pessimists Contribute To Society. The Optimist Invents The Aeroplane, The Pessimist The Parachute.

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If At Age 20 You Are Not A Communist Then You Have No Heart. If At Age 30 You Are Not A Capitalist Then You Have No Brains.

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.

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

I Do Not Want Actors And Actresses To Understand My Plays. That Is Not Necessary. If They Will Only Pronounce The Correct Sounds I Can Guarantee The Results.

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.

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.

The English Have No Respect For Their Language, And Will Not Teach Their Children To Speak It. They Spell It So Abominably That No Man Can Teach Himself What It Soundslike.it Isimpossible Foran Englishmanto Openhis Mouth Without Making Some Other Englishman Hate Or Despise Him.

It Is The Highest Creatures Who Take The Longest To Mature, And Are The Most Helpless During Their Immaturity.

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

I Do Not Waste My Time Writing Pot-boilers: The Pot Must Be Boiled, And Even My Pot Au Feu Has Some Chunks Of Fresh Meat In It. ...i Have No Time To Boil Myself Down; And Anyhow I Could Not Do So And Preserve All The Necessary Nutriment And The Flavoring On Which The Digestibility Depends.

We Have In England A Curious Belief In First-rate People, Meaning All The People We Do Not Know; And This Consoles Us For The Undeniable Second-rateness Of The People We Do Know.

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

Where There Is No Religion, Hypocrisy Becomes Good Taste.

We Are All Victims Of The Violence That Animals Suffer... Their Liberation Is Also Our Liberation.

When You Find Something Funny Search It For Hidden Truth.

Every Englishman Believes That Handel Now Occupies An Important Position In Heaven. If So, Le Bon Dieu Must Feel Toward Him Very Much As Louis Treize Felt Toward Richelieu.

The Universal Regard For Money Is The One Hopeful Fact In Our Civilization.

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

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

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.

Woman Reduces Us All To The Common Denominator.

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

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.

An English Army Led By An Irish General: That Might Be A Match For A French Army Led By An Italian General.

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

A Thing That Nobody Believes Cannot Be Proved Too Often.

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.

During The Last Considerable Epidemic At The Turn Of The Century, I Was A Member Of The Health Committee Of London Borough Council, And I Learned How The Credit Of Vaccination Is Kept Up Statistically By Diagnosing All The Revaccinated Cases (of Smallpox) As Pustular Eczema, Varioloid Or What Not---except Smallpox.

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.

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

Women Upset Everything. When You Let Them Into Your Life, You Find That The Woman Is Driving At One Thing And You're Driving At Another.

The Anti-vivisector Does Not Deny That Physiologists Must Make Experiments And Even Take Chances With New Methods. He Says That They Must Not Seek Knowledge By Criminal Methods, Just As They Must Not Make Money By Criminal Methods. He Does Not Object To Galileo Dropping Cannon Balls From The Top Of The Leaning Tower Of Pisa; But He Would Object To Shoving Off Two Dogs Or American Tourists.

A Book Is Like A Child: It Is Easier To Bring It Into The World Than To Control It When It Is Launched There.

A Mind Of The Caliber Of Mine Cannot Derive Its Nutrient From Cows.

Religion Is A Good Invention In Times Of Stress.

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

In The Middle Ages People Believed That The Earth Was Flat, For Which They Had At Least The Evidence Of Their Senses: We Believe It To Be Round, Not Because As Many As 1 Percent Of Us Could Give Physical Reasons For So Quaint A Belief, But Because Modern Science Has Convinced Us That Nothing That Is Obvious Is True, And That Everything That Is Magical, Improbable, Extraordinary, Gigantic, Microscopic, Heartless, Or Outrageous Is Scientific.

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

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