Background Image

...

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.

-George Bernard Shaw

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Marx's Kapital Is Not

George Bernard Shaw

...

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.

Views: 5

Topic

More From George Bernard Shaw

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.

When A Thing Is Funny, Search It Carefully For A Hidden Truth.

Give Me The Artist Who Breathes It Like A Native, And Goes About His Work In It As Quietly As A Common Man Goes About His Ordinary Business. Mozart Did So; And That Is Why I Like Him. Even If I Did Not, I Should Pretend To; For A Taste In His Music Is A Mark Of Caste Among Musicians, And Should Be Worn, Like A Tall Hat, By The Amateur Who Wishes To Pass For A True Brahmin.

Disobedience, The Rarest And Most Courageous Of The Virtues, Is Seldom Distinguished From Neglect, The Laziest And Commonest Of The Vices.

Even If Animal Experimentation Was Proved To Be Of Value, It Would Be Morally Wrong.

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.

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.

We Must Reform Society Before We Can Reform Ourselves.

Science Can Never Solve One Problem Without Raising Ten More Problems.

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.

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.

The Test Of Good Education Is Seeing How It Behaves In A Fight.

Sherlock Holmes Was A Drug Addict Without A Single Amiable Trait.

Hatred Is The Coward's Revenge For Being Intimidated.

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.

The Righteous Man Takes His Life In His Hand Whenever He Utters The Truth.

Civilization Is A Disease Produced By The Practice Of Building Societies With Rotten Material.

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.

Newspaper : A Device Unable To Distinguish Between A Bicycle Accident And The Collapse Of Civilisation.

God Help England If She Had No Scots To Think For Her.

Only Lawyers And Mental Defectives Are Automatically Exempt For Jury Duty.

If All The Statisticians In The World Were Laid Head To Toe, They Wouldn't Be Able To Reach A Conclusion

The Only Way In Which A Nation Can Make Itself Wealthy And Prosperous Is By Good Housekeeping: That Is, By Providing For Its Wants In The Order Of Their Importance, And Allowing No Money To Be Wasted On Whims And Luxuries Until Necessities Have Been Thoroughly Served.

Do You Think That The Things People Make Fools Of Themselves About Are Any Less Real And True Than The Things They Behave Sensibly About? They Are More True: They Are The Only Things That Are True.

It Seems As Though Every Time You Learn Something New You Have To Give Up Something.

The Goal Of An Artist Is To Create The Definitive Work That Cannot Be Surpassed.

Independence? That's Middle Class Blasphemy. We Are All Dependent On One Another, Every Soul Of Us On Earth.

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.

Reminiscences Make One Feel So Deliciously Aged And Sad.

There Is Only One Person An English Girl Hates More Than She Hates Her Elder Sister; And That Is Her Mother.

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?

As I Write, There Is A Craze For What Is Called Psychoanalysis, Or The Cure Of Diseases By Explaining To The Patient What Is The Matter With Him: An Excellent Plan If You Happen To Know What Is The Matter With Him, Especially When The Explanation Is That There Is Nothing The Matter With Him.

If We Have Come To Think That The Nursery And The Kitchen Are The Natural Sphere Of A Woman, We Have Done So Exactly As English Children Come To Think That A Cage Is The Natural Sphere Of A Parrot: Because They Have Never Seen One Anywhere Else.

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

Of The Three Official Objects Of Our Prison System: Vengeance, Deterrence, And Reformation Of The Criminal, Only One Is Achieved; And That Is The One Which Is Nakedly Abominable.

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.

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

Security, The Chief Pretense Of Civilization, Cannot Exist Where The Worst Of Dangers, The Danger Of Poverty, Hangs Over Everyone's Head.

We Learn From History That We Learn Nothing From History.

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

We Live In An Atmosphere Of Shame. We Are Ashamed Of Everything That Is Real About Us; Ashamed Of Ourselves, Of Our Relatives, Of Our Incomes, Of Our Accents, Of Our Opinions, Of Our Experience, Just As We Are Ashamed Of Our Naked Skins.

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.

Those Who Understand Evil Pardon It.

The Right To Know Is Like The Right To Live. It Is Fundamental And Unconditional In Its Assumption That Knowledge, Like Life, Is A Desirable Thing.

My Main Reason For Adopting Literature As A Profession Was That, As The Author Is Never Seen By His Clients, He Need Not Dress Respectably.

A Great Social Reformer.

A Genius Is A Person Who Is Seeing Further And Probing Deeper Than Other People Has A Different Set Of Ethical Valuations From Their And Has Energy Enough To Give Effect To This Extra Vision And Its Valuations In Whatever Manner Best Suits His Or Her

Marriage Is The Most Licentious Of Human Institutions.

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.

In This World There Is Always Danger For Those Who Are Afraid Of It.

Few Of Us Have Vitality Enough To Make Any Of Our Instincts Imperious.

A Happy Family Is But An Earlier Heaven.

We Are Compelled By The Theory Of God's Already Achieved Perfection To Make Him A Devil As Well As A God, Because Of The Existenceof Evil. The God Of Love, If Omnipotent And Omniscient, Must Be The God Of Cancer And Epilepsy As Well.... Whoever Admits That Anything Living Is Evil Must Either Believe That God Is Malignantly Capable Of Creating Evil, Or Else Believe That God Has Made Many Mistakes In His Attempts To Make A Perfect Being.

You Have No Right To Say That I Am Not Sincere. I Have Found A Happiness In Art That Real Life Has Never Given Me. I Am Intensely In Earnest About Art. There Is Is A Magic And Mystery In Art That You Know Nothing Of.

If Any Religion Had A Chance Of Ruling Over England, Nay Europe Within The Next Hundred Years, It Could Be Islam.

Men Get Tired Of Everything, Of Heaven No Less Than Of Hell; And That All History Is Nothing But A Record Of The Oscillations Of The World Between These Two Extremes. An Epoch Is But A Swing Of The Pendulum; And Each Generation Thinks The World Is Progressing Because It Is Always Moving.

I Am The Most Spontaneous Speaker In The World Because Every Word, Every Gesture, And Every Retort Has Been Carefully Rehearsed.

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

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

Beware Of The Man Who Does Not Return Your Blow: He Neither Forgives You Nor Allows You To Forgive Yourself.

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.

The Happiness Of Credulity Is A Cheap And Dangerous Quality.

If There Is A God

God Has Given Us A World That Nothing But Our Own Folly Keeps From Being A Paradise.

A Man Of Genius Is Not A Man Who Sees More Than Other Men Do. On The Contrary, It Is Very Often Found That He Is Absentminded Andobserves Much Less Than Other People.... Why Is It That The Public Have Such An Exaggerated Respect For Him--after He Is Dead? The Reason Is That The Man Of Genius Understands The Importance Of The Few Things He Sees.

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

And So, To The End Of History, Murder Shall Breed Murder, Always In The Name Of Right And Honor And Peace, Until The Gods Are Tired Of Blood And Create A Race That Can Understand.

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.

All Censorships Exist To Prevent Anyone From Challenging Current Conceptions And Existing Institutions. All Progress Is Initiated By Challenging Current Conceptions, And Executed By Supplanting Existing Institutions. Consequently, The First Condition Of Progress Is The Removal Of Censorship.

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

Use Your Health, Even To The Point Of Wearing It Out. That Is What It Is For. Spend All You Have Before You Die; Do Not Outlive Yourself.

Whisky Is Liquid Sunshine.

Give Women The Vote, And In Five Years There Will Be A Crushing Tax On Bachelors.

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

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

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

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

When We Want To Read Of The Deeds That Are Done For Love, Whither Do We Turn? To The Murder Column.

Pasteboard Pies And Paper Flowers Are Being Banished From The Stage By The Growth Of That Power Of Accurate Observation Which Is Commonly Called Cynicism By Those Who Have Not Got It...

A Day's Work Is A Day's Work, Neither More Nor Less, And The Man Or Woman Who Does It Needs A Day's Sustenance, A Night's Repose And Due Leisure, Whether They Be Painter Or Ploughman.

You Practically Do Not Use Semicolons At All. This Is A Symptom Of Mental Defectiveness, Probably Induced By Camp Life.

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.

The Utmost I Can Bear For Myself In My Best Days Is That I Was One Of The Hundred Best Playwrights In The World, Which Is Hardly A Supreme Distinction.

All Progress Depends Upon The Unreasonable Person.

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

Happiness And Beauty Are By-products. Folly Is The Direct Pursuit Of Happiness And Beauty.

What A Man Is Depends On His Character; But What He Does, And What We Think Of What He Does, Depends On His Circumstances.

Though All Society Is Founded On Intolerance, All Improvement Is Founded On Tolerance.

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

We Are The Living Graves Of Murdered Beasts.

Vegetarian Diet

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

You Cannot Be A Hero Without Being A Coward.

Those Who Admire Modern Civilization Usually Identify It With The Steam Engine And The Electric Telegraph.

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 ... Must Continue To Strive For More Knowledge And More Power, Though The New Knowledge Always Contradicts The Old And The New Power Is The Destruction Of The Fools Who Misuse It.

Journalists Are Too Poorly Paid In This Country To Know Anything That Is Fit For Publication.

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

The Cinema Is Going To Form The Mind Of England. The National Conscience, The National Ideals And Tests Of Conduct, Will Be Those Of The Film.

A Broken Heart Is A Very Pleasant Complaint For A Man In London If He Has A Comfortable Income.

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.

Our Way Of Getting An Army Able To Fight The German Army Is To Declare War On Germany Just As If We Had Such An Army, And Then Trust To The Appalling Resultant Peril And Disaster To Drive Us Into Wholesale Enlistment.

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.

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

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.

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

The Heart Of An Irishman Is Nothing But His Imagination

The Pianoforte Is The Most Important Of All Musical Instruments; Its Invention Was To Music What The Invention Of Printing Was To Poetry.

The Liar's Punishment Is Not In The Least That He Is Not Believed, But That He Cannot Believe Anyone Else.

General Consultant To Mankind.

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

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.

As An Old Soldier, I Admit The Cowardice: It's As Universal As Seasickness, And Matters Just As Little.

If There Is Anything I Hate In A Woman, It's Want Of Character.

It Is Ridiculous To Say That Art Has Nothing To Do With Morality. What Is True Is That The Artist's Business Is Not That Of The Policeman.

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.

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.

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.

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

We Must Not Stay As We Are, Doing Always What Was Done Last Time; Or We Shall Stick In The Mud.

If You Say That God Is Good, Great, Blessed, Wise Or Any Such Thing, The Starting Point Is This : God Is.

Who Are Those We Love? Only Those We Do Not Hate.

Home Is The Girl's Prison And The Woman's Workhouse.

Our Prejudices Are So Deeply Rooted That We Never Think Of Them As Prejudices But Call Them Common Sense.

If You Lived In London, Where The Whole System Is One Of False Good-fellowship, And You May Know A Man For Twenty Years Without Finding Out That He Hates You Like Poison, You Would Soon Have Your Eyes Opened. There We Do Unkind Things In A Kind Way: We Say Bitter Things In A Sweet Voice: We Always Give Our Friends Chloroform When We Tear Them To Pieces.

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.

Better Keep Yourself Clean And Bright; You Are The Window Through Which You Must See The World.

Communism, Being The Lay Form Of Catholicism, And Indeed Meaning The Same Thing, Has Never Had Any Lack Of Chaplains.

There Is Nothing More Dangerous Than The Conscience Of A Bigot.

Dangerous Things

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

Islam Is The Best Religion And Muslims Are The Worst Followers

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

I Am Very Subtle; But Man Is Deeper In His Thought Than I Am. The Woman Knows That There Is No Such Thing As Nothing: The Man Knows That There Is No Such Day As Tomorrow. I Do Well To Worship Them.

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

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.

When You Loved Me I Gave You The Whole Sun And Stars To Play With. I Gave You Eternity In A Single Moment, Strength Of The Mountains In One Clasp Of Your Arms, And The Volume Of All The Seas In One Impulse Of Your Soul.

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.

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

Not Until He Acquires European Manners Does The American Anarchist Become The Gentleman Who Assures You That People Cannot Be Mademoral By Act Of Parliament (the Truth Being That It Is Only By Acts Of Parliament That Men In Large Communities Can Be Made Moral, Even When They Want To).

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

All Problems Are Finally Scientific Problems.

You Know Well I Couldn't Bear To Live With A Low Common Man After You Two; And It's Wicked And Cruel Of You To Insult Me By Pretending I Could.

Once The Divinity We Worshipped Made Itself Visible And Comprehensible, We Crucified It.

If You Leave Your Art, The World Will Beat You Back To It. The World Has Not An Ambition Worth Sharing, Or A Prize Worth Handling.

An American Has No Sense Of Privacy. He Does Not Know What It Means.there Is No Such Thing In The Country.

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

Englishmen Hate Liberty And Equality Too Much To Understand Them. But Every Englishman Loves A Pedigree.

Female Murderers Get Sheaves Of Offers Of Marriage.

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

Martyrdom Is The Only Path To Immortality That Requires No Talent Whatsoever.

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.

Men Are Wise In Proportion, Not To Their Experience, But To Their Capacity For Experience.

What I Say Today Everybody Will Say Tomorrow, Though They Will Not Remember Who Put It Into Their Heads. Indeed They Will Be Right For I Never Remember Who Puts Things Into My Head : It Is The Zeitgeist.

When Your Eyes Are Fixed In The Stare Of Unconsciousness, And Your Throat Coughs The Last Gasping Breath - As One Dragged In The Dark To A Great Precipice - What Assistance Are A Wife And Child?

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.

Fashions Are The Only Induced Epidemics, Proving That Epidemics Can Be Induced By Tradesmen.

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.

Ireland, Sir, For Good Or Evil, Is Like No Other Place Under Heaven, And No Man Can Touch Its Sod Or Breathe Its Air Without Becoming Better Or Worse.

Becoming Better

Syllables Govern The World.

Money Is A Most Important Thing In The World.

Important Things

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

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

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

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

The Road To Ignorance Is Paved With Good Editors.

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

It Has Taken Me Nearly Twenty Years Of Studied Self-restraint, Aided By The Natural Decay Of My Faculties, To Make Myself Dull Enough To Be Accepted As A Serious Person By The British Public; And I Am Not Sure That I Am Not Still Regarded As A Suspicious Character In Some Quarters.

Democracy Is A Word All Public Men Use And None Understand.

Even A Vortex Is A Vortex In Something. You Can't Have A Whirlpool Without Water; And You Can't Have A Vortex Without Gas, Or Molecules Or Atoms Or Ions Or Electrons Or Something, Not Nothing.

I Must Remind You That Our Credulity Is Not To Be Measured By The Truth Of The Things We Believe. When Men Believed That The Earthwas Flat, They Were Not Credulous: They Were Using Their Common Sense, And, If Asked To Prove That The Earth Was Flat, Would Have Said Simply, "look At It." Those Who Refuse To Believe That It Is Round Are Exercising A Wholesome Skepticism.

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.

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

Vegetarian Diet

Education Can And Should Do Much Influence Social, Moral And Intellectual Discovery By Stimulating Critical Attitudes Of Thought In The Young

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.

No Englishman Is Ever Fairly Beaten

How You Ought Properly To Spell 'fish' In English: 'goti' .

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

Cruelty Would Be Delicious If One Could Only Find Some Sort Of Cruelty That Didn't Really Hurt.

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 Part Of Eugenic Politics Would Finally Land Us In An Extensive Use Of The Lethal Chamber. A Great Many People Would Have To Be Put Out Of Existence Simply Because It Wastes Other People's Time To Look After Them.

Parentage Is A Very Important Profession, But No Test Of Fitness For It Is Ever Imposed In The Interest Of The Children.

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

People Changing

Alcohol Is A Very Necessary Article. It Enables Parliament To Do Things At Eleven At Night That No Sane Person Would Do At Eleven In The Morning.

But Whether The Risks To Which Liberty Exposes Us Are Moral Or Physical Our Right To Liberty Involves The Right To Run Them. A Man Who Is Not Free To Risk His Neck As An Aviator Or His Soul As A Heretic Is Not Free At All; And The Right To Liberty Begins, Not At The Age Of 21 Years But 21 Seconds.

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.

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

The Man Who Has Never Made A Mistake Will Never Make Anything Else.

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.

If All The Churches Of Europe Closed Their Doors Until The Drums Ceased Rolling They Would Act As A Most Powerful Reminder That Though The Glory Of War Is A Famous And Ancient Glory, It Is Not The Final Glory Of God.

The Love Of Economy Is The Root Of All Virtue.

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

All Sorts Of Bodily Diseases Are Produced By Half-used Minds.

Optimistic Lies Have Such Immense Therapeutic Value That A Doctor Who Cannot Tell Them Convincingly Has Mistaken His Profession.

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.

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.

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.

Imprisonment Is As Irrevocable As Death.

Marriage Is An Alliance Entered Into By A Man Who Can't Sleep With The Window Shut, And A Woman Who Can't Sleep With The Window Open.

If A Woman Rebels Against High-heeled Shoes, She Should Take Care To Do It In A Very Smart Hat

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

An Election Is A Moral Horror, As Bad As A Battle Except For The Blood; A Mud Bath For Every Soul Concerned In It.

Trending Author

Paula Radcliffe

Category