Background Image

...

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 ... If People Are Fit To Live, Let Them Live Under Decent Human Conditions. If They Are Not Fit To Live, Kill Them In A Decent Human Way. Is It Any Wonder That Some Of Us Are Driven To Prescribe The Lethal Chamber As The Solution For The Hard Cases Which Are At Present Made The Excuse For Dragging All The Other Cases Down To Their Level, And The Only Solution That Will Create A Sense Of Full Social Responsibility In Modern Populations?

-George Bernard Shaw

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Moment We Face

George Bernard Shaw

...

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 ... If People Are Fit To Live, Let Them Live Under Decent Human Conditions. If They Are Not Fit To Live, Kill Them In A Decent Human Way. Is It Any Wonder That Some Of Us Are Driven To Prescribe The Lethal Chamber As The Solution For The Hard Cases Which Are At Present Made The Excuse For Dragging All The Other Cases Down To Their Level, And The Only Solution That Will Create A Sense Of Full Social Responsibility In Modern Populations?

Views: 6

Topic

More From George Bernard Shaw

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

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

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

First Love Is Only A Little Foolishness And A Lot Of Curiosity.

The Buried Truth Germinates And Breaks Through To The Light.

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

Just Do What Must Be Done. This May Not Be Happiness, But It Is Greatness.

Wicked People Means People Who Have No Love: Therefore, They Have No Shame. They Have The Power To Ask Love Because The Don't Need It: They Have The Power To Offer It Because They Have None To Give.

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

It Would Positively Be A Relief To Me To Dig Shakespeare Up And Throw Stones At Him.

In A Battle All You Need To Make You Fight Is A Little Hot Blood And The Knowledge That It's More Dangerous To Lose Than To Win.

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

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

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?

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.

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

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.

Modern Poverty Is Not The Poverty That Was Blest In The Sermon On The Mount.

Sermon On The Mount

Where Equality Is Undisputed, So Also Is Subordination.

When I Was Young, I Observed That Nine Out Of Ten Things I Did Were Failures. So I Did Ten Times More Work.

Science Is Always Simple And Always Profound. It Is Only The Half-truths That Are Dangerous.

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

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.

My Father Must Have Had Some Elementary Education For He Could Read And Write And Keep Accounts Inaccurately

This Souls'prison We Call England.

Activity Is The Only Road To Knowledge.

I'm Not A Teacher: Only A Fellow Traveler Of Whom You Asked The Way. I Pointed Ahead - Ahead Of Myself As Well As You.

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

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.

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.

Nothing Remains Beautiful And Interesting Except Thought, Because The Thought Is The Life.

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.

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

People Changing

A Tranquil Woman Can Go On Sewing Longer Than An Angry Man Can Go On Fuming.

The Greatest Thing In Life Is To Die Young - But Delay It As Long As Possible.

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

There Is The Eternal War Between Those Who Are In The World For What They Can Get Out Of It And Those Who Are In The World To Make It A Better Place For Everybody To Live In.

Fine Art Is The Only Teacher Except Torture.

A Man Who Desires To Get Married Should Know Everything Or Nothing.

Importance Of Being Earnest

I Myself Have Been Particularly Careful Never To Say A Civil Word To The United States. I Have Scoffed At Their Inhabitants As A Nation Of Villagers. I Have Defined The 100 % American As 99 % An Idiot. And They Adore Me.

Woman Reduces Us All To The Common Denominator.

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

A Man's Own Self Is The Last Person To Believe In Him, And Is Harder To Cheat Than The Rest Of The World.

Don't Wait For The Right Opportunity: Create It.

All Autobiographies Are Lies. I Do Not Mean Unconscious, Unintentional Lies: I Mean Deliberate Lies.

Doing What Needs To Be Done May Not Make You Happy, But It Will Make You Great.

The Only Time My Education Was Interrupted Was When I Was In School.

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

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.

If You Would Stick To The Concrete, And Put Your Discoveries In The Form Of Entertaining Anecdotes About Your Adventures With Women, Your Conversation Would Be Easier To Follow.

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

Let Wife And Child Perish, And Lay Bricks For Your Last Crust, Rather Than Part With An Iota Of Your [copy]rights.

I Was Taught When I Was Young That If People Would Only Love One Another, All Would Be Well With The World. I Found When I Tried To Put That Into Practice, Not Only Were Other People Seldom Lovable But I Wasn't Very Lovable Myself.

Power Does Not Corrupt Men; Fools, However, If They Get Into A Position Of Power, Corrupt Power.

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

In A Living Society Every Day Is A Day Of Judgment; And Its Recognition As Such Is Not The End Of All Things But The Beginning Ofa Real Civilization.

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.

We're Human Beings We Are - All Of Us - And That's What People Are Liable To Forget. Human Beings Don't Like Peace And Goodwill And Everybody Loving Everybody Else. However Much They May Think They Do, They Don't Really Because They're Not Made Like That. Human Beings Love Eating And Drinking And Loving And Hating. They Also Like Showing Off, Grabbing All They Can, Fighting For Their Rights And Bossing Anybody Who'll Give Them Half A Chance.

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.

To Be A Champion You Must Live Like One.

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.

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.

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.

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

You Cannot Be A Hero Without Being A Coward.

Life Is A Constant Becoming: All Stages Lead To The Beginning Of Others.

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.

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

Stop Being Jews And Start Being Human Beings.

Hollywood Keeps Before Its Child Audiences A String Of Glorified Young Heroes, Everyone Of Whom Is An Unhesitating And Violent Anarchist. His One Answer To Everything That Annoys Him Or Disparages His Country Or His Parents Or His Young Lady Or His Personal Code Of Manly Conduct Is To Give The Offender A "sock" In The Jaw.... My Observation Leads Me To Believe That It Is Not The Virtuous People Who Are Good At Socking Jaws.

Make It Compulsory For A Doctor Using A Brass Plate To Have Inscribed On It, In Addition To The Letters Indicating His Qualifications, The Words 'remember That I Too Am Mortal'.

Happy Is The Man Who Can Make A Living By His Hobby

No Community Has Ever Yet Passed Beyond The Initial Phases In Which Its Pugnacity And Fanaticism Enabled It To Found A Nation, And Its Cupidity To Establish And Develop A Commercial Civilization.

A Critic Is One Who Leaves No Turn Unstoned.

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

Even The Youngest Of Us May Be Wrong Sometimes.

You Will Think Less Of The Art, When You Know The Artist

All Industries Are Brought Under The Control Of Such People [film Producers] By Capitalism. If The Capitalists Let Themselves Be Seduced From Their Pursuit Of Profits To The Enchantments Of Art, They Would Be Bankrupt Before They Knew Where They Were. You Cannot Combine The Pursuit Of Money With The Pursuit Of Art.

Life Is Too Short For Men To Take It Seriously.

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.

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.

Marriage Is Good Enough For The Lower Classes: They Have Facilities For Desertion That Are Denied To Us.

When God Created Man And Woman, He Did Not Take A Patent. That's Why Any Imbecile Has Been Able To Do So Ever Since.

My Specialty Is Being Right When Other People Are Wrong.

The Possibilities Are Numerous Once We Decide To Act And Not React.

Decision Making

A Fool's Brain Digests Philosophy Into Folly, Science Into Superstition, And Art Into Pedantry. Hence University Education.

If More Than 10% Of The People Like A Painting, You Can Be Sure It's Bad.

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.

We Sing In A Church, Why Can We Not Dance There?

For The Pre-darwinian Age Had Come To Be Regarded As A Dark Age In Which Men Still Believed That The Book Of Genesis Was A Standard Scientific Treatise, And That The Only Additions To It Were Galileo'a Demonstration Of Leonardo Da Vinci's Simple Remark That The Earth Is A Moon Of The Sun, Sir Humphrey Davy's Invention Of The Safety Lamp, The Discovery Of Electricity, The Application Of Steam To Industrial Purposes, And The Penny Post.

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.

If You Can’t Appreciate What You’ve Got, You’d Better Get What You Can Appreciate.

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

The Heretic Is Always Better Dead. And Mortal Eyes Cannot Distinguish The Saint From The Heretic.

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.

My Reputation Grows With Every Failure.

Learning From Failure

Absolute Honesty Is As Absurd An Abstraction As An Absolute Temperature Or An Absolute Value.

If Only For A Half Hour A Day, A Child Should Do Something Serviceable To The Community

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

Fine Art Is The Subtlest, The Most Seductive, The Most Effective Instrument Of Moral Propaganda In The World, Excepting Only The Example Of Personal Conduct; And I Waive Even This Exception In Favor Of The Art Of The Stage, Because It Works By Exhibiting Examples Of Personal Conduct Made Intelligible And Moving To Crowds Of Unobservant Unreflecting People To Whom Real Life Means Nothing.

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

Fashions, After All, Are Only Induced Epidemics.

Liberty Is The Breath Of Life To Nations.

Happy Independence Day

I Loathe The Mess Of Mean Superstitions And Misunderstood Prophecies Which Is Still Rammed Down The Throats Of Children Under The Name Of Christianity.

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.

A Doctor's Reputation Is Made By The Number Of Eminent Men Who Die Under His Care.

I Would Like To Take You Seriously, But To Do So Would Be An Affront To Your Intelligence.

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

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

People Have Pointed Out Evidences Of Personal Feeling In My Notices As If They Were Accusing Me Of A Misdemeanor, Not Knowing That Criticism Written Without Personal Feeling Is Not Worth Reading. It Is The Capacity For Making Good Or Bad Art A Personal Matter That Makes A Man A Critic.

What Is Wrong With Priests And Popes Is That Instead Of Being Apostles And Saints, They Are Nothing But Empirics Who Say I Know Instead Of I Am Learning, And Pray For Credulity And Inertia As Wise Men Pray For Skepticism And Activity.

There Have Been Summits Of Civilization At Which Heretics Like Socrates , Who Was Killed Because He Was Wiser Than His Neighbors, Have Not Been Tortured, But Ordered To Kill Themselves In The Most Painless Manner Known To Their Judges. But From That Summit There Was A Speedy Relapse Into Our Present Savagery.

I Find That The Moment I Let A Woman Make Friends With Me, She Becomes Jealous, Exacting, Suspicious, And A Damned Nuisance. I Find That The Moment I Let Myself Make Friends With A Woman, I Become Selfish And Tyrannical.

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

A Man's Behaviour May Be Quite Harmless And Even Beneficial, When He Ismorally Behaving Like A Scoundrel. And He May Do Great Harm When He Is Morally Acting On The Highest Principles.

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.

I Know I Began As A Passion And Have Ended As A Habit , Like All Husbands .

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

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.

All Religions Begin With A Revolt Against Morality, And Perish When Morality Conquers Them.

Faith In Reason As A Prime Motor Is No Longer The Criterion Of The Sound Mind, Any More Than Faith In The Bible Is The Criterion Of Righteous Intention.

We Should Have Had Socialism Already, But For The Socialists, Am Quite Willing To Drop The Name If Dropping It Will Help Me To Get The Thing.

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

Inspirational Health

Liberty Means Responsibility. That Is Why Most Men Dread It.

If You Strike A Child, Take Care That You Strike It In Anger, Even At The Risk Of Maiming It For Life. A Blow In Cold Blood Neither Can Nor Should Be Forgiven.

Remember That I Too Am Mortal.

I Believe In The Discipline Of Silence, And Could Talk For Hours About It.

Reminiscences Make One Feel So Deliciously Aged And Sad.

Virtue Is Insufficient Temptation.

Only Where There Is Pecuniary Equality Can The Distinction Of Merit Stand Out.

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

Decency Is Indecency's Conspiracy Of Silence

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

Nothing Is More Dangerous Than A Poor Doctor: Not Even A Poor Employer Or A Poor Landlord.

A Succession Of Eye-openers Each Involving The Repudiation Of Some Previously Held Belief.

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

The Ability To Make Witty Observations Is Commonly Refered To As "cynism" By People Who Lack It.

The Greatest Of Evils And The Worst Of Crimes Is Poverty.

Man Is The Only Animal Which Esteems Itself Rich In Proportion To The Number And Voracity Of Its Parasites.

A Drama Critic Is A Man Who Leaves No Turn Unstoned.

Never Believe Anything A Writer Tells You About Himself. A Man Comes To Believe In The End The Lies He Tells Himself About Himself.

You May Well Ask Me Why...i Took The Time To Write [books]. I Can Only Reply That I Do Not Know. There Was No Why About It. I Had To: That Was All.

It Is The End Of Happiness And The Beginning Of Peace.

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.

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

The Truth Sticks In Our Throats With All The Sauces It Is Served With: It Will Never Go Down Until We Take It Without Any Sauce At All.

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

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

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.

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

Your Wits Can't Thicken In That Soft Moist Air, On Those White Springy Roads, In Those Misty Rushes And Brown Bogs, On Those Hillsides Of Granite Rocks And Magenta Heather. You've No Such Colours In The Sky, No Such Lure In The Distances, No Such Sadness In The Evenings. Oh The Dreaming! The Dreaming! The Torturing, Heart-scalding, Never Satisfying Dreaming, Dreaming, Dreaming, Dreaming!

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

The First Condition Of Progress Is The Removal Of Censorship.

What, Or Who, Led You To Take Up Photography, And About What Date ? George Bernard Shaw – I Always Wanted To Draw And Paint. I Had No Literary Ambition. I Aspired To Be A Michelangelo, Not A Shakespeare. But I Could Not Draw Well Enough To Satisfy Myself; And The Instruction I Could Get Was Worse Than Useless. So When Dry Plates And Push Buttons Came Into The Market I Bought A Box Camera And Began Pushing The Button. It Was In 1898.

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

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

A Great Social Reformer.

All Progress Is Due To The Unreasonable Person.

The Only Person Who Acts Sensibly Is My Tailor. He Takes My Measure Anew Every Time He Sees Me. Everyone Else Goes By Their Old Measurements.

Who Is This Baby Ruth? And What Does She Do?

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

The Whole World Is Strewn With Snares, Traps, Gins And Pitfalls For The Capture Of Men By Women.

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

You Can Lose A Man Like That By Your Own Death, But Not By His.

Death And Dying

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

The Vilest Abortionist Is He Who Attempts To Mould A Child's Character.

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

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

There Is Nothing On Earth More Exquisite Than A Bonny Book, With Well-placed Columns Of Rich Black Writing In Beautiful Borders, And Illuminated Pictures Cunningly Inset. But Nowadays, Instead Of Looking At Books, People Read Them. A Book Might As Well Be One Of Those Orders For Bacon And Bran.

Indifference Is The Essence Of Inhumanity.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If You Teach A Man Anything, He Will Never Learn.

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

It Is A Noteworthy Fact That Kicking And Beating Have Played So Considerable A Part In The Habits Which Necessity Has Imposed On Mankind In Past Ages That The Only Way Of Preventing Civilized Men From Beating And Kicking Their Wives Is To Organize Games In Which They Can Kick And Beat Balls.

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

The Philosopher Is Nature's Pilot.

A Man Who Has No Office To Go, To I Don't Care Who He Is, Is A Trial Of Which You Can Have No Conception.

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

A Socialist Is Somebody Who Doesn't Have Anything, And Is Ready To Divide It Up Equally Among Everybody.

Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions, Not With Bad Ones. All Men Mean Well.

My Schooling Did Me A Great Deal Of Harm And No Good Whatever; It Was Simply Dragging A Child's Soul Through The Dirt.

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.

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.

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.

I Love Little Children Too But I Don't Cut Off Their Heads And Stick Them In Vases.

Only In The Problem Play Is There Any Real Drama, Because Drama Is No Mere Setting Up Of The Camera To Nature: It Is The Presentation In Parable Of The Conflict Between Man's Will And His Environment: In A Word, Of Problem.

What Englishman Will Give His Mind To Politics As Long As He Can Afford To Keep A Motor Car?

In The Arts Of Life Main Invents Nothing; But In The Arts Of Death He Outdoes Nature Herself, And Produces By Chemistry And Machinery All The Slaughter Of Plague, Pestilence And Famine. ... There Is Nothing In Man's Industrial Machinery But His Greed And Sloth: His Heart Is In His Weapons.

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.

We All Have--to Put It As Nicely As I Can--our Lower Centres And Our Higher Centres. Our Lower Centres Act: They Act With Terriblepower That Sometimes Destroys Us; But They Don't Talk.... Since The War The Lower Centres Have Become Vocal. And The Effect Is That Of An Earthquake. For They Speak Truths That Have Never Been Spoken Before--truths That The Makers Of Our Domestic Institutions Have Tried To Ignore.

This Is The True Joy In Life: Being Used For A Purpose Recognized By Yourself As A Mighty One, Being A Force Of Nature Instead Of A Feverish, Selfish Little Clod Of Ailments And Grievances, Complaining That The World Will Not Devote Itself To Making You Happy. I Am Of The Opinion That My Life Belongs To The Whole Community And As Long As I Live, It Is My Privilege To Do For It What I Can. It Is A Sort Of Splendid Torch Which I Have Got Hold Of For The Moment And I Want To Make It Burn As Brightly As Possible Before Handing It On To Future Generations.

No Doubt It Is Easy To Demostrate That Property Will Destroy Society Unless Society Destroys It.

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

A Learned Man Is An Idler Who Kills Time By Study.

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

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

Political Necessities Sometime Turn Out To Be Political Mistakes.

Trending Author

Charles Babbage

Category