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Just As The Historian Can Teach No Real History Until He Has Cured His Readers Of The Romantic Delusion That The Greatness Of A Queen Consists In Her Being A Pretty Woman And Having Her Head Cut Off, So The Playwright Of The First Order Can Do Nothing With His Audience Until He Has Cured Them Of Looking At The Stage Through The Keyhole, And Sniffing Round The Theatre As Prurient People Sniff Round The Divorce Court.

-George Bernard Shaw

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Just As The Historian

George Bernard Shaw

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Just As The Historian Can Teach No Real History Until He Has Cured His Readers Of The Romantic Delusion That The Greatness Of A Queen Consists In Her Being A Pretty Woman And Having Her Head Cut Off, So The Playwright Of The First Order Can Do Nothing With His Audience Until He Has Cured Them Of Looking At The Stage Through The Keyhole, And Sniffing Round The Theatre As Prurient People Sniff Round The Divorce Court.

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I Have Studied Him - The Wonderful Man - And In My Opinion Far From Being An Anti-christ He Must Be Called The Saviour Of Humanity.

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

You Have To Choose Between Trusting To The Natural Stability Of Gold And The Natural Stability Of The Honesty And Intelligence Of The Members Of The Government. And, With Due Respect To These Gentlemen, I Advise You, As Long As The Capitalist System Lasts, To Vote For Gold.

The Function Of Comedy Is To Dispelunconsciousness By Turning The Searchlight Of The Keenest Moral And Intellectual Analysisright On To It.

The Domestic Career Is No More Natural To All Women Than The Military Career Is Natural To All Men.

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

Every Man Over Forty Is A Scoundrel.

The Medical Profession (is) A Conspiracy To Hide Its Own Shortcomings. No Doubt The Same May Be Said Of All Professions. They Are All Conspiracies Against The Laity... (u)ntil There Is A Practicable Alternative To Blind Trust In The Doctor, The Truth About The Doctor Is So Terrible That We Dare Not Face It.

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.

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Like Fingerprints, All Marriages Are Different.

Capitalism Has Destroyed Our Belief In Any Effective Power But That Of Self Interest Backed By Force. But Even Capitalist Cynicism Will Admit That However Unconscionable We May Be When Our Own Interests Are Affected, We Can Be Most Indignantly Virtuous At The Expense Of Others.

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

Whenever I See The Word Operation, Especially Trifling Operation, I At Once Write Off The Patient As Dead.

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

A Dinner! How Horrible! I Am To Be Made The Pretext For Killing All Those Wretched Animals And Birds, And Fish! Thank You For Nothing. Now If It Were To Be A Fast Instead Of A Feast; Say A Solemn Three Days' Abstention From Corpses In My Honour, I Could At Least Pretend To Believe That It Was Disinterested. Blood Sacrifices Are Not In My Line

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When Two People Are Under The Influence Of The Most Violent, Most Insane, Most Delusive, And Most Transient Of Passions, They Are Required To Swear That They Will Remain In That Excited, Abnormal, And Exhausting Condition Continuously Until Death Do Them Part.

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The Great Advantage Of A Hotel Is That It Is A Refuge From Home Life.

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Two People Getting Together To Write A Book Is Like Three People Getting Together To Have A Baby. One Of Them Is Superfluous.

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

Power Is The Faculty Or Capacity To Act, The Strength And Potency To Accomplish Something.

The Doctor Learns That If He Gets Ahead Of The Superstitions Of His Patients He Is A Ruined Man; And The Result Is That He Instinctively Takes Care Not To Get Ahead Of Them.

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Why Not Give Christianity A Trial?

Taking All The Round Of Professions And Occupations, You Will Find That Every Man Is The Worse For Being Poor; And The Doctor Is A Specially Dangerous Man When Poor.

Of All The Anti-social Vested Interests The Worst Is The Vested Interest In Ill-health.

Life Contains But Two Tragedies. One Is Not To Get Your Heart's Desire; The Other Is To Get It.

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

You Do Not Settle Whether An Argument Is Justified By Merely Showing That It Is Of Some Use. The Distinction Is Not Between Useful And Useless Experiments But Between Barbarous And Civilized Behaviour. Vivisection Is A Social Evil Because If It Advances Human Knowledge, It Does So At The Expense Of Human Character.

Democracy Substitutes Election By The Incompetent Many For Appointment By The Corrupt Few.

Democracies Have

Every Fool Believes What His Teachers Tell Him, And Calls His Credulity Science Or Morality As Confidently As His Father Called It Divine Revelation.

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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?

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

Schools And Schoolmasters, As We Have Them Today, Are Not Popular As Places Of Education And Teachers, But Rather Prisons And Turnkeys In Which Children Are Kept To Prevent Them Disturbing And Chaperoning Their Parent.

Captain Shotover: How Much Does Your Soul Eat? Ellie: Oh, A Lot. It Eats Music And Pictures And Books And Mountains And Lakes And Beautiful Things To Wear And Nice People To Be With.

Bible Worship, Though At Its Best It May Achieve Sublimity By Keeping Its Head In The Skies, May Also Make Itself Both Ridiculousand Dangerous By Having Its Feet Off The Ground.

When A Lion Meets Another With A Louder Roar, The First Lion Thinks The Last A Bore.

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.

Youth, What A Pity To Waste It On The Young.

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

I Prefer The Man Who Calls His Nonsense A Mystery To Him Who Who Pretends It Is A Weighed, Measured, Analyzed Fact.

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

Justice Is Impartiality. Only Strangers Are Impartial.

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

What Is Any Respectable Girl Brought Up To Do But To Catch Some Rich Man's Fancy And Get The Benefit Of His Money By Marrying Him?--as If A Marriage Ceremony Could Make Any Difference In The Right Or Wrong Of The Thing!

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.

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

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

Woman's Happiness Begins With Her First Love And Ends About Then

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.

Fear Is Choosing The Safe Course

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

The Fickleness Of The Women I Love Is Only Equalled By The Infernal Constancy Of The Women Who Love Me.

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

The Fact That We Can Become Accustomed To Anything, However Disgusting At First, Makes It Necessary To Examine Carefully Everything We Have Become Accustomed To.

Imagination Is The Beginning Of Creation. You Imagine What You Desire, You Will What You Imagine And At Last You Create What You Will.

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A Critic Is One Who Leaves No Turn Unstoned.

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.

Set Me Anything To Do As A Task, And It Is Inconceivable The Desire I Have To Do Something Else.

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.

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. He Fights You On Patriotic Principles; He Robs You On Business Principles; He Enslaves You On Imperial Principles; He Bullies You On Manly Principles; He Supports His King On Loyal Principles And Cuts Off His King's Head On Republican Principles.

Patriotism Is Your Conviction That This Country Is Superior To All Others Because You Were Born In It.

Whenever You Wish To Do Anything Against The Law, Cicely, Always Consult A Good Solicitor First.

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

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

What Is Wrong With The Prosaic Englishman Is What Is Wrong With The Prosaic Men Of All Countries: Stupidity.

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.

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.

Only Fools Repeat The Same Things Over And Over, Expecting To Obtain Different Results.

People Must Not Be Forced To Adopt Me As Their Favourite Author, Even For Their Own Good.

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

You Have Set Up In New York Harbor A Monstrous Idol Which You Call Liberty. The Only Thing That Remains To Complete That Monument Is To Put On Its Pedestal The Inscription Written By Dante On The Gate Of Hell: All Hope Abandon Ye Who Enter Here.

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.

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

Those Who Understand The Steam Engine And The Electric Telegraph Spend Their Lives In Trying To Replace Them With Something Better.

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.

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

I'm Only A Beer Teetotaller, Not A Champagne Teetotaller.

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.

Dying Is A Troublesome Business: There Is Pain To Be Suffered, And It Wrings One's Heart; But Death Is A Splendid Thing -a Warfare Accomplished, A Beginning All Over Again, A Triumph. You Can Always See That In Their Faces.

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

There Is No Satisfaction In Hanging A Man Who Does Not Object To It.

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

When A Man Teaches Something He Does Not Know To Somebody Else Who Has No Aptitude For It, And Gives Him A Certificate Of Proficiency, The Latter Has Completed The Education Of A Gentleman.

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

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