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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.

-George Bernard Shaw

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The One Point On

George Bernard Shaw

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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.

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More From George Bernard Shaw

General Consultant To Mankind.

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.

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.

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.

Murder And Capital Punishment Are Not Opposites That Cancel One Another, But Similars That Breed Their Kind. It Is The Deed That Teaches Not The Name We Give It.

In An Ugly And Unhappy World The Richest Man Can Purchase Nothing But Ugliness And Unhappiness.

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.

A Third Variety Of Drama ... Begins As Tragedy With Scraps Of Fun In It ... And Ends In Comedy Without Mirth In It, The Place Of Mirth Being Taken By A More Or Less Bitter And Critical Irony.

Now Of All The Idealist Abominations That Make Society Pestiferous I Doubt If There Be Any So Mean As That Of Forcing Self-sacrifice On A Woman Under The Pretense That She Likes It.

I Have Never Admitted The Right Of An Elderly Author To Alter The Work Of A Young Author, Even When The Young Author Happens To Be His Former Self.

No Age Or Condition Is Without Its Heroes . The Least Incapable General In A Nation Is Its Cæsar, The Least Imbecile Statesman Its Solon , The Least Confused Thinker Its Socrates , The Least Commonplace Poet Its Shakespeare .

At Present, Intelligent People Do Not Have Their Children Vaccinated, Nor Does The Law Now Compel Them To. The Result Is Not, As The Jennerians Prophesied, The Extermination Of The Human Race By Smallpox; On The Contrary More People Are Now Killed By Vaccination Than By Smallpox.

A Photographer Is Like A Cod, Which Produces A Million Eggs In Order That One May Reach Maturity.

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

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

Liquor Is The Chloroform Which Enables The Poor Man To Endure The Painful Operation Of Living.

You Are All Fundamentalists With A Top Dressing Of Science. That Is Why You Are The Stupidest Of Conservatives And Reactionists In Politics And The Most Bigoted Of Obstructionists In Science Itself. When It Comes To Getting A Move On You Are All Of The Same Opinion: Stop It, Flog It, Hang It, Dynamite It, Stamp It Out.

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.

People Become Attached To Their Burdens Sometimes More Than The Burdens Are Attached To Them.

A Nap, My Friend, Is A Brief Period Of Sleep Which Overtakes Superannuated Persons When They Endeavor To Entertain Unwelcome Visitors Or To Listen To Scientific Lectures.

It Is Not Disbelief That Is Dangerous To Our Society; It Is Belief.

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

It Is Doubtless Wise, When A Reform Is Introduced, To Try To Persuade The British Public That It Is Not A Reform At All; But Appearances Must Be Kept Up To Some Extent At Least.

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.

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

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.

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

When Domestic Servants Are Treated As Human Beings It Is Not Worth While To Keep Them.

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.

All Dress Is Fancy Dress, Is It Not, Except Our Natural Skins?

He Who Bears The Brand Of Cain Shall Rule The Earth.

Christianity As A Specific Doctrine Was Slain With Jesus, Suddenly And Utterly. He Was Hardly Cold In His Grave, Or High In His Heaven (as You Please), Before The Apostles Dragged The Tradition Of Him Down To The Level Of The Thing It Has Remained Ever Since.

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

Get Out Of My Way; For I Won't Stop For You.

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.

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?

I Am Sorry To Have To Introduce The Subject Of Christmas. It Is An Indecent Subject; A Cruel, Gluttonous Subject; A Drunken, Disorderly Subject; A Wasteful, Disastrous Subject; A Wicked, Cadging, Lying, Filthy, Blasphemous And Demoralizing Subject. Christmas Is Forced On A Reluctant And Disgusted Nation By The Shopkeepers And The Press: On Its Own Merits It Would Wither And Shrivel In The Fiery Breath Of Universal Hatred; And Anyone Who Looked Back To It Would Be Turned Into A Pillar Of Greasy Sausages.

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

Give A Man Health And A Course To Steer, And He'll Never Stop To Trouble About Whether He's Happy Or Not.

This Is The True Joy In Life, The Being Used For A Purpose Recognized By Yourself As A Mighty One.

Opera Is When A Tenor And Soprano Want To Make Love, But Are Prevented From Doing So By A Baritone.

A Man Never Tells You Anything Until You Contradict Him.

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

I Dread Success. To Have Succeeded Is To Have Finished One's Business On Earth, Like The Male Spider Who Is Killed By The Female The Moment He Has Succeeded In His Courtship. I Like The State Of Continual Becoming, With A Goal In Front And Not Behind.

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

The Heart Of An Irishman Is Nothing But His Imagination

Women Have Been A Ghastly Nuisance In My Life.

If Women Were As Fastidious As Men, Morally Or Physically, There Would Be An End Of The Race.

Nothing Is Worth Doing Unless The Consequences May Be Serious.

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.

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.

What Man Really Wishes To Do He Will Find A Means Of Doing.

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

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.

During The Suffragette Revolt Of 1913 I[urged] That What Was Needed Was Not The Vote, But A Constitutional Amendment Enactingthat All Representative Bodies Shall Consist Of Women And Men In Equal Numbers, Whether Elected Or Nominated Or Coopted Or Registered Or Picked Up In The Street Like A Coroner's Jury. In The Case Of Elected Bodies The Only Way Of Effecting This Is By The Coupled Vote. The Representative Unit Must Not Be A Man Or A Woman But A Man And A Woman.

With The Single Exception Of Homer, There Is No Eminent Writer, Not Even Sir Walter Scott, Whom I Can Despise So Entirely As I Despise Shakespeare When I Measure My Mind Against His. . . . It Would Positively Be A Relief To Me To Dig Him Up And Throw Stones At Him.

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.

Happiness And Beauty Are By-products.

Happiness And Beauty

Life Is A Disease; And The Only Difference Between On Man And Another Is The Stage Of The Disease At Which He Lives.

The Danger Of Crippling Thought, The Danger Of Obstructing The Formation Of The Public Mind By Specially Suppressing ... Representations Is Far Greater Than Any Real Danger That There Is From Such Representations.

I Become More Convinced That Beings From Other Planets Are Using The Earth As A Lunatic Asylum

Lunatic Asylums

What Is Life But A Series Of Inspired Follies? The Difficulty Is To Find Them To Do. Never Lose A Chance: It Doesn’t Come Every Day.

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

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

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

If There Was Nothing Wrong In The World There Wouldn't Be Anything For Us To Do.

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.

I Sold Flowers. I Didn't Sell Myself. Now You've Made A Lady Of Me I'm Not Fit To Sell Anything Else.

As 99 Per Cent Of English Authors And 100 Per Cent Of American Ones [authors] Are Just Such Imbeciles, Managers And Publishers Make A Practice Of Asking For Every Right The Author Possesses.

The Educated Man Is A Greater Nuisance Than The Uneducated One.

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

The Unconscious Self Is The Real Genius. Your Breathing Goes Wrong The Moment Your Conscious Self Meddles With It.

He Who Has Never Hoped Can Never Despair

I Like Flowers, I Also Like Children, But I Do Not Chop Their Heads Off And Keep Them In Bowls Of Water Around The House.

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.

Ye Poor Posterity, Think Not That Ye Are The First. Other Fools Before Ye Have Seen The Sun Rise And Set, And The Moon Change Her Shape And Her Hour. As They Were So Ye Are; And Yet Not So Great; For The Pyramids My People Built Stand To This Day; Whilst The Dustheaps On Which Ye Slave, And Which Ye Call Empires, Scatter In The Wind Even As Ye Pile Your Dead Sons' Bodies On Them To Make Yet More Dust.

The Ideal Love Affair Should Be Conducted By Post.

Capitalism Drives The Employers To Do Their Worst To The Employed, And The Employed To Do The Least For Them. And It Boasts All The Time Of The Incentive It Provides To Both To Do Their Best! . . . The Reason The Capitalist System Has Worked So Far Without Jamming For More Than A Few Months At A Time, And Then Only In Places, Is That It Has Not Yet Succeeded In Making A Conquest Of Human Nature So Complete That Everybody Acts On Strictly Business Principles.

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

Patriotism Is A Word Which Always Commemorates A Robbery.

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

A Man Learns To Skate By Staggering About And Making A Fool Of Himself. Indeed He Progresses In All Things By Resolutely Making A Fool Of Himself.

All Progress Is Due To The Unreasonable Person.

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

I Never Accepted A Knighthood Because To Me, Is Honour Enough?

All Problems Are Finally Scientific Problems.

The Real Brahms Is Nothing More Than A Sentimental Voluptuary. Rather Tiresomely Addicted To Dressing Himself Up As Handel Or Beethoven And Making A Prolonged And Intolerable Noise.

The Best Way To Get Your Point Across Is To Entertain.

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

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

Dancing Is A Very Crude Attempt To Get Into The Rhythm Of Life.

The Chief Objection To Playing Wind Instruments Is That It Prolongs The Life Of The Player.

The Fact That A Believer Is Happier Than A Skeptic Is No More To The Point Than The Fact That A Drunken Man Is Happier Than A Sober One.

An Englishman Does Everything On Principle: He Fights You On Patriotic Principles; He Robs You On Business Principles; He Enslaves You On Imperial Principles.

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

There Are No Secrets Better Kept Than The Secrets Everybody Guesses.

Keeping Secrets

Best Kept Secrets

Hell Is A Place Where You Have Nothing To Do But Amuse Yourself.

It's A Dangerous Thing To Be Married Right Up To The Hilt, Like My Daughter's Husband. The Man Is At Home All Day, Like A Damned Soul In Hell.

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

A Serious Illness Or A Death Advertises The Doctor Exactly As A Hanging Advertises The Barrister Who Defended The Person Hanged.

Serious Illness

There Is No Sincerer Love Than The Love Of Food.

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

It Is Courage, Courage, Courage, That Raises The Blood Of Life To Crimson Splendor.

Lack Of Money Is The Root Of Of All Evil.

Greatest Wealth

As To Spelling The Very Frequent Word Though With Six Letters Instead Of Two, It Is Impossible To Discuss It, As It Is Outside The Range Of Common Sanity. In Comparison Such A Monstrosity As Phlegm For Flem Is Merely Disgusting.

The British Are Apt To Make Merits Of Their Stupidities, And To Represent Their Various Incapacities As Points Of Good Breeding.

There Is, On The Whole, Nothing On Earth Intended For Innocent People So Horrible As A School. To Begin With, It Is A Prison. But In Some Respects More Cruel Than A Prison. In A Prison, For Instance, You Are Not Forced To Read Books Written By The Warders And The Governor. . . .in The Prison You Are Not Forced To Sit Listening To Turnkeys Discoursing Without Charm Or Interest On Subjects That They Don't Understand And Don't Care About, And Therefore Incapable Of Making You Understand Or Care About. In A Prison They May Torture Your Body; But They Do Not Torture Your Brains.

My Religion? Well, My Dear, I Am A Millionaire. That Is My Religion.

Remember That You Are A Human Being With A Soul And The Divine Gift Of Articulate Speech: That Your Native Language Is The Language Of Shakespeare And Milton And The Bible; And Don't Sit There Crooning Like A Bilious Pigeon.

Native Language

Besides, Do Any Of Us Understand What We Are Doing? If We Did, Would We Ever Do It?

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

This Is My Father. Try What You Can With Him! He Won't Listen To Me, Because He Remembers What A Fool I Was When I Was A Baby.

Those Who Understand Evil Pardon It.

Instruction In Sex Is As Important As Instruction In Food; Yet Not Only Are Our Adolescents Not Taught The Physiology Of Sex, But Never Warned That The Strongest Sexual Attraction May Exist Between Persons So Incompatible In Tastes And Capacities That They Could Not Endure Living Together For A Week Much Less A Lifetime.

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

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

If Parents Would Only Realize How They Bore Their Children.

Life Is No Brief Candle To Me. It Is A Sort Of Splendid Torch Which I Have Got A Hold Of For The Moment, And I Want To Make It Burn As Brightly As Possible Before Handing It On To Future Generations.

Defeatism Is The Wretchedest Of Policies.

The Business Man - The Man To Whom Age Brings Golf Instead Of Wisdom.

I Don't Like The Idea Of Killing My Fellow Creatures In Order To Eat Their Dead Bodies.

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

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

You Are My Inspiration And My Folly. You Are My Light Across The Sea, My Million Nameless Joys, And My Day's Wage. You Are My Divinity, My Madness, My Selfishness, My Transfiguration And Purification. You Are My Rapscallionly Fellow Vagabond, My Tempter And Star. I Want You.

All The Sweetness Of Religion Is Conveyed To The World By The Hands Of Storytellers And Image-makers. Without Their Fictions The Truths Of Religion Would For The Multitude Be Neither Intelligible Nor Even Apprehensible; And The Prophets Would Prophesy And The Teachers Teach In Vain.

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.

Martyrdom, Sir, Is What These People Like: It Is The Only Way In Which A Man Can Become Famous Without Ability.

The Philosopher Is Nature's Pilot.

Few People Think More Than Two Or Three Times A Year; I Have Made An International Reputation For Myself By Thinking Once Or Twice A Week.

You Accepted Allah Or You Had Your Throat Cut By Someone Who Did Accept Him, And Who Went To Paradise For Having Sent You To Hell.

We Must Always Think About Things, And We Must Think About Things As They Are, Not As They Are Said To Be.

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

We Call The One Side [of Humanity] Religion, And We Call The Other Science. Religion Is Always Right. ... Science Is Always Wrong; It Is The Very Artifice Of Men. Science Can Never Solve One Problem Without Raising Ten More Problems.

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

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.

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.

What Is Self-control? It Is Nothing But A Highly Developed Vital Sense, Dominating And Regulating The Mere Appetites. To Overlook The Very Existence Of This Supreme Sense; To Miss The Obvious Inference That It Is The Quality That Distinguishes The Fittest To Survive.

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

Even The Youngest Of Us May Be Wrong Sometimes.

I Work As My Father Drank.

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.

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

It Is Easy - Terribly Easy - To Shake A Man's Faith In Himself. To Take Advantage Of That To Break A Man's Spirit Is Devil's Work.

A Perpetual Holiday Is A Good Working Definition Of Hell.

It Is Dangerous To Be Sincere Unless You Are Also Stupid.

I Can't Control What Life Did To Me, But I Can Control How I React. Therein Lies The Difference.

Patriotism Is A Pernicious, Psychopathic Form Of Idiocy.

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.

You Can Rave About Stravinsky Without The Slightest Risk Of Being Classified As A Lunatic By The Next Generation .

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

The Sound Body Is The Product Of The Sound Mind.

The English Are Not A Very Spiritual People, So They Invented Cricket To Give Them Some Idea Of Eternity.

Rebecca [west] Can Handle A Pen As Brilliantly As Ever I Could And Much More Savagely.

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.

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

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

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.

The Jews Generally Give Value. They Make You Pay; But They Deliver The Goods. In My Experience The Men Who Want Something For Nothing Are Invariably Christians.

I Feel Nothing But The Accursed Happiness I Have Dreaded All My Life Long: The Happiness That Comes As Life Goes, The Happiness Of Yielding And Dreaming Instead Of Resisting And Doing, The Sweetness Of The Fruit That Is Going Rotten.

Conceive. That Is The Word That Means Both The Beginning In Imagination And The End In Creation.

Forgive Him, For He Believes That The Customs Of His Tribe Are The Laws Of Nature!

The Golden Rule Is That There Are No Golden Rules.

Even Under The Most Perfect Social Democracy We Should, Without Communism, Still Be Living Like Hogs, Except That Each Hog Would Get His Fair Share Of Grub.... Whilst We Are Hogs, Let Us At Least Be Well-fed, Healthy, Reciprocally Useful Hogs, Instead Of--well, Instead Of The Sort We Are At Present.

Life's No Brief Candle-it's A Splendid Torch!

Unless The People Can Choose Their Leaders And Rulers, And Can Revoke Their Choice At Intervals Long Enough To Test Their Measuresby Results, The Government Will Be A Tyranny Exercised In The Interests Of Whatever Classes Or Castes Or Mobs Or Cliques Have This Choice.

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

If You Don't Begin To Be A Revolutionist At The Age Of Twenty, Then At Fifty You Will Be A Most Impossible Old Fossil. If You Area Red Revolutionary At The Age Of Twenty, You Have Some Chance Of Being Up-to-date When You Are Forty!

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.

Activity Is The Only Road To Knowledge.

The Great Danger Of Conversion In All Ages Has Been That When The Religion Of The High Mind Is Offered To The Lower Mind, The Lower Mind, Feeling Its Fascination Without Understanding It, And Being Incapable Of Rising To It, Drags It Down To Its Level By Degrading It.

The Politician Who Once Had To Learn To Flatter Kings Has Now To Learn How To Fascinate, Amuse, Coax, Humbug, Frighten, Or Otherwise Strike The Fancy Of The Electorate.

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.

The Seven Deadly Sins... Food, Clothing, Firing, Rent, Taxes, Respectability And Children. Nothing Can Lift Those Seven Millstones From Man's Neck But Money; And The Spirit Cannot Soar Until The Millstones Are Lifted.

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

My Heart, My Heart, Be Whole And Free: Love Is Thine Only Enemy.

Nobody Can Live In Society Without Conventions. The Reason Why Sensible People Are As Conventional As They Can Bear To Be Is That Conventionality Saves So Much Time And Thought And Trouble And Social Friction Of One Sort Or Another That It Leaves Them Much More Leisure Time For Freedom Than Unconventionality Does.

I Finished My First Book Seventy-six Years Ago. I Offered It To Every Publisher On The English-speaking Earth I Had Ever Heard Of. Their Refusals Were Unanimous: And It Did Not Get Into Print Until, Fifty Years Later; Publishers Would Publish Anything That Had My Name On It.

The Only Power A God Can Teach Is The Power Of Doing Without Happiness.

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

Why, Except As A Means Of Livelihood, A Man Should Desire To Act On The Stage When He Has The Whole World To Act In, Is Not Clear To Me.

Life Would Be Tolerable But For Its Amusements.

The Notion That Disarmament Can Put A Stop To War Is Contradicted By The Nearest Dogfight.

A Thing That Nobody Believes Cannot Be Proved Too Often.

They Tell Me That So-and-so, Who Does Not Write Prefaces, Is No Charlatan. Well, I Am. I First Caught The Ear Of The British Public On A Cart In Hyde Park, To The Blaring Of Brass Bands,and This . . . Because . . . I Am A Natural-born Mountebank.

Socialism Is The Same As Communism, Only Better English.

All Progress Depends Upon The Unreasonable Person.

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

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.

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.

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

A Soldier Is An Anachronism Of Which We Must Get Rid.

If The Lesser Mind Could Measure The Greater As A Foot-rule Can Measure A Pyramid, There Would Be Finality In Universal Suffrage. As It Is, The Political Problem Remains Unsolved.

It's Prudent To Gain The Whole World And Lose Your Own Soul. But Don't Forget That Your Soul Sticks To You If You Stick To It; But The World Has A Way Of Slipping Through Your Fingers.

The American White Relegates The Black To The Rank Of Shoeshine Boy; And He Concludes From This That The Black Is Good For Nothing But Shining Shoes.

Reasonable Men Adapt Themselves To Their Environment; Unreasonable Men Try To Adapt Their Environment To Themselves. Thus All Progress Is The Result Of The Efforts Of Unreasonable Men.

An Author Who Gives A Manager Or Publisher Any Rights In His Work Except Those Immediately And Specifically Required For Its Publication Or Performance Is For Business Purposes An Imbecile.

In Gambling The Many Must Lose In Order That The Few May Win.

Decency Cannot Be Discussed Without Indecency!

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.

What We Are Confronted With Now Is A Growing Perception That If We Desire A Certain Type Of Civilization And Culture We Must Exterminate The Sort Of People Who Do Not Fit Into It.

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