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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.

-George Bernard Shaw

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The Medieval Doctors Of

George Bernard Shaw

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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.

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If The Announcer Can Produce The Impression That He Is A Gentleman, He May Pronounce As He Pleases.

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

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.

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

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

The Universal Regard For Money Is The One Hopeful Fact In Our Civilization. Money Is The Most Important Thing In The World. It Represents Health, Strength, Honor, Generosity And Beauty . . . . Not The Least Of Its Virtues Is That It Destroys Basic People As Certainly As It Fortifies And Dignifies Noble People.

The Best Reformers The World Has Ever Seen Are Those Who Commence On Themselves.

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.

The Whole Strength Of England Lies In The Fact That The Enormous Majority Of The English People Are Snobs.

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Political Necessities Sometime Turn Out To Be Political Mistakes.

All Classes In Proportion To Their Lack Of Travel And Familiarity With Foreign Literature Are Bellicose, Prejudiced Against Foreigners, Fond Of Fighting As A Cruel Sport - In Short, Dog-like In Their Notions Of Foreign Policy.

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

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

Nothing Can Save Us From A Perpetual Headlong Fall Into A Bottomless Abyss But A Solid Footing Of Dogma; And We No Sooner Agree To That Than We Find That The Only Trustworthy Dogma Is That There Is No Dogma.

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

Perhaps The Greatest Social Service That Can Be Rendered By Anybody To The Country And To Mankind Is To Bring Up A Family. But Here Again, Because There Is Nothing To Sell, There Is A Very General Disposition To Regard A Married Woman's Work As No Work At All, And To Take It As A Matter Of Course That She Should Not Be Paid For It.

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

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

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.

I've Posed Nude For A Photographer In The Manner Of Rodin's Thinker, But I Merely Looked Constipated.

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.

Activity Is The Only Road To Knowledge.

Effectiveness Of Assertion Is The Alpha And Omega Of Style.

Alpha And Omega

When A Bishop At The First Shot Abandons The Worship Of Christ And Rallies His Flock Round The Altar Of Mars, He May Be Acting Patriotically... But That Does Not Justify Him In Pretending...that Christ Is, In Effect, Mars.

When A Man Says Money Can Do Anything, That Settles It: He Hasn't Got Any.

Popular Christianity Has For Its Emblem A Gibbet, For Its Chief Sensation A Sanginary Execution After Torture, For Its Central Mystery Is An Insane Vengeance Bought Off By A Trumpery Expiation. But There Is A Nobler And Profounder Christianity Which Affirms The Sacred Mystery Of Equality And Forbids The Glaring Futility And Folly Of Vengeance.

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.

The Minorities Are Sometimes Right. The Majorities Never.

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

War Does Not Decide Who Is Right But Who Is Left.

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

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

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.

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.

Now That We Have Learned To Fly The Air Like Birds, Swim Under Water Like Fish, We Lack One Thing - To Learn To Live On Earth As Human Beings.

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

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I Want To Be Thoroughly Used Up When I Die, For The Harder I Work The More I Live. I Rejoice In Life For Its Own Sake.

Positive Thinking

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

Like Fingerprints, All Marriages Are Different.

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The Word Morality, If We Met It In The Bible, Would Surprise Us As Much As The Word Telephone Or Motor Car.

I Sing, Not Arms And The Hero, But The Philosophic Man: He Who Seeks In Contemplation To Discover The Inner Will Of The World, Ininvention To Discover The Means Of Fulfilling That Will, And In Action To Do That Will By The So-discovered Means.

There Is A Disease To Which Plays As Well As Men Become Liable With Advancing Years. In Men It Is Called Doting, In Plays Dating.the More Topical The Play The More It Dates.

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

Inspirational Health

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Funny Inspirational

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

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

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

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

What Is Really Important In Man Is The Part Of Him That We Do Not Understand. Of Much Of It We Are Not Even Conscious, Just As We Are Not Normally Conscious Of Keeping Up Our Circulation By Our Heart-pump, Though If We Neglect It We Die.

Reformers Have The Idea That Change Can Be Achieved By Brute Sanity.

I Can't Talk Religion To A Man With Bodily Hunger In His Eyes.

Most People Do Not Pray; They Only Beg.

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The Faults Of The Burglar Are The Qualities Of The Financier.

I Object To Publishers: The One Service They Have Done Me Is To Teach Me To Do Without Them. They Combine Commercial Rascality With Artistic Touchiness And Pettishness, Without Being Either Good Business Men Or Fine Judges Of Literature.

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Democracy Is A Device That Insures We Shall Be Governed No Better Than We Deserve.

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Nature Holds No Brief For The Human Experiment; It Must Stand Or Fall By Its Results.

Life Levels All Men. Death Reveals The Eminent.

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Happiness And Beauty Are By-products.

Happiness And Beauty

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The Only Sensible Person Is My Tailor. He Measures Me Anew Each Time He Sees Me.

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

I Was Told That My Diet Was So Poor That I Could Not Repair The Bones That Were Broken And Operated On. So I Have Just Had An Xradiograph Taken; And Lo! Perfectly Mended Solid Bone So Beautifully White That I Have Left Instructions That, If I Die, A Glove Stretcher Is To Be Made Of Me And Sent To You As A Souvenir

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Money Is The Counter That Enables Life To Be Lived Socially; It Is Life As Truly As Sovereigns And Banknotes Are Money.

Female Murderers Get Sheaves Of Offers Of Marriage.

Decency Is Indecency's Conspiracy Of Silence

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People Expect Too Much Of One Year And Too Little Of Ten.

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

If There Was Twenty Ways Of Telling The Truth And Only One Way Of Telling A Lie, The Government Would Find It Out. It's In The Nature Of Governments To Tell Lies.

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.

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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.

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 Heart Of An Irishman Is Nothing But His Imagination

Let No One Suppose That The Words Doctor And Patient Can Disguise From The Parties The Fact That They Are Employer And Employee.

No Use Slaving For Me And Then Saying You Want To Be Cared For: Who Cares For A Slave? If You Come Back, Come Back For The Sake Of Good Fellowship; For You’ll Get Nothing Else.

First Really Like Is Just A Little Bit Foolishness As Well As A Lot Of Curiosity. No Actually Self-respecting Girl Would Reap The Benefits Of It.

With The Exception Of Capitalism, There Is Nothing So Revolting As Revolution.

Not Everybody Is Strong Enough To Endure Life Without An Anesthetic. Drink Probably Averts More Gross Crime Than It Causes.

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.

A Man Never Tells You Anything Until You Contradict Him.

The Great Secret...is Not Having Bad Manners Or Good Manners...but Having The Same Manner For All Human Souls.

Find Enough Clever Things To Say, And You're A Prime Minister; Write Them Down And You're A Shakespeare.

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

Nobody Can Say A Word Against Greek: It Stamps A Man At Once As An Educated Gentlemen.

We All Go About Longing For Love: It Is The First Need Of Our Natures, The Loudest Cry Of Our Hearts.

Make It A Rule Never To Give A Child A Book You Would Not Read Yourself.

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.

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