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The Schoolmaster Is The Person Who Takes The Children Off The Parents' Hands For A Consideration. That Is To Say, He Establishes A Child Prison, Engages A Number Of Employee Schoolmasters As Turnkeys, And Covers Up The Essential Cruelty And Unnaturalness Of The Situation By Torturing The Children If They Do Not Learn, And Calling This Process, Which Is Within The Capacity Of Any Fool Or Blackguard, By The Sacred Name Of Teaching.

-George Bernard Shaw

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The Schoolmaster Is The

George Bernard Shaw

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The Schoolmaster Is The Person Who Takes The Children Off The Parents' Hands For A Consideration. That Is To Say, He Establishes A Child Prison, Engages A Number Of Employee Schoolmasters As Turnkeys, And Covers Up The Essential Cruelty And Unnaturalness Of The Situation By Torturing The Children If They Do Not Learn, And Calling This Process, Which Is Within The Capacity Of Any Fool Or Blackguard, By The Sacred Name Of Teaching.

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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.

My Mother Married A Very Good Man ... And She Is Not At All Keen On My Doing The Same.

Violence Is The Repartee Of The Illiterate.

You Must Not Suppose, Because I Am A Man Of Letters, That I Never Tried To Earn An Honest Living.

No Man Ever Believes That The Bible Means What It Says: He Is Always Convinced That It Says What He Means.

Just As I Cannot Remember Any Time When I Could Not Read And Write, I Cannot Remember Any Time When I Did Not Exercise My Imagination In Daydreams About Women.

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

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

Nothing Makes A Man So Selfish As Work.

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.

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.

It Is Monstrous That Custom Should Force Us To Display Our Faces Ostentatiously, However Worn And Wrinkled And Mean They May Be, Whilst Carefully Concealing All Our Other Parts, However Shapely And Well Preserved.

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

To Endure The Pain Of Living, We All Drug Ourselves More Or Less With Gin, With Literature, With Superstitions, With Romance, With Idealism, Political, Sentimental, And Moral, With Every Possible Preparation Of That Universal Hashish: Imagination.

Go On Writing Plays, My Boy, One Of These Days One Of These London Producers Will Go Into His Office And Say To His Secretary, "is There A Play From Shaw This Morning?" And When She Says, "no," He Will Say, "well, Then We'll Have To Start On The Rubbish." And That's Your Chance, My Boy.

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The Person I Miss Most Is The One I Could Have Been.

Could Have Been

It's Just As Unpleasant To Get More Than You Bargain For As To Get Less.

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 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.

The Function Of The Actor Is To Make The Audience Imagine For The Moment That Real Things Are Happening To Real People.

You Can Be A Thorough-going Neo-darwinian Without Imagination, Metaphysics, Poetry, Conscience, Or Decency. For 'natural Selection' Has No Moral Significance: It Deals With That Part Of Evolution Which Has No Purpose, No Intelligence, And Might More Appropriately Be Called Accidental Selection, Or Better Still, Unnatural Selection, Since Nothing Is More Unnatural Than An Accident. If It Could Be Proved That The Whole Universe Had Been Produced By Such Selection, Only Fools And Rascals Could Bear To Live.

There Is Not One Single Established Religion That An Intelligent, Educated Man Can Believe.

The Savage Bows Down To Idols Of Wood And Stone, The Civilized Man To Idols Of Flesh And Blood

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

My Specialty Is Being Right When Other People Are Wrong.

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

Vulgarity Is A Necessary Part Of A Complete Author's Equipment; And The Clown Is Sometimes The Best Part Of The Circus.

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?

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.

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

Imagination Is The Beginning Of Creation.

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

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

All Professions Are Conspiracies Against The Laity.

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

When Commenting On The Turmoil And Disorder Of The World, If The Other Planets Are Inhabited, They Must Be Using This Earth As Their Insane Asylum.

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.

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.

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Keeping Secrets

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

To A Mathematician The Eleventh Means Only A Single Unit: To The Bushman Who Cannot Count Further Than His Ten Fingers It Is An Incalculable Myriad.

Only In Books Has Mankind Known Perfect Truth, Love And Beauty.

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To Be In Hell Is To Drift; To Be In Heaven Is To Steer.

A True Artist Will Let His Wife Starve, His Children Go Barefoot, His Mother Drudge For His Living At Seventy, Sooner Than Work At Anything But His Art.

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

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No Man Fully Capable Of His Own Language Ever Masters Another.

All Great Truth First Starts As Blasphemy.

It Is Difficult, If Not Impossible, For Most People To Think Otherwise Than In The Fashion Of Their Own Period.

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I Assume That To Prevent Illness In Later Life, You Should Never Have Been Born At All.

The Buried Truth Germinates And Breaks Through To The Light.

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

The Difference Between A Lady And A Flower Girl Is Not How She Behaves, But How She’s Treated.

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Like Fingerprints, All Marriages Are Different.

Revolutions Have Never Lightened The Burden Of Tyranny; They Have Only Shifted It To Another Shoulder.

Vegetarians Claim To Be Immune From Most Diseases But They Have Been Known To Die From Time To Time.

What Is Virtue But The Trade Unionism Of The Married?

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.

The Plain Working Truth Is That It Is Not Only Good For People To Be Shocked Occasionally, But Absolutely Necessary To The Progress Of Society That They Should Be Shocked Pretty Often.

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A Lifetime Of Happiness! No Man Alive Could Bear It: It Would Be Hell On Earth.

Jesus Remains Unshaken As The Practical Man; And We Stand Exposed As The Fools, The Blunderers, The Unpractical Visionaries.

What Use Are Cartridges In Battle? I Always Carry Chocolate Instead.

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

I Am Afraid We Must Make The World Honest Before We Can Honestly Say To Our Children That Honesty Is The Best Policy.

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.

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Religion Is A Good Invention In Times Of Stress.

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It Is Feeling That Sets A Man Thinking, And Not Thought That Sets Him Feeling.

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

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

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

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

If You Go To Heaven Without Being Naturally Qualified For It You Will Not Enjoy Yourself There.

The Poor Silly-clever Irishman Takes Off His Hat To God's Englishman.

Get Married, But Never To A Man Who Is Home All Day.

Statistics Show That Of Those Who Contract The Habit Of Eating, Very Few Survive.

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

All Progress Depends Upon The Unreasonable Person.

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An English Army Led By An Irish General: That Might Be A Match For A French Army Led By An Italian General.

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If The English Can Survive Their Food, They Can Survive Anything.

The Notion That The Colonel Need Be A Better Man Than The Private Is As Confused As The Notion That The Keystone Need Be Stronger Than The Coping Stone.

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.

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

It Is One Of The Mysterious Ways Of Allah To Make Women Troublesome When He Makes Them Beautiful.

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.

Every Step Of Progress Means A Duty Repudiated, And A Scripture Torn Up.

Dogmatic Toleration Is Nonsense: I Would No More Tolerate The Teaching Of Calvinism To Children If I Had Power To Persecute It Than The British Raj Tolerated Suttee In India. Every Civilized Authority Must Draw A Line Between The Tolerable And The Intolerable.

Pothinus: "is It Possible That Caesar, The Conqueror Of The World, Has Time To Occupy Himself With Such A Trifle As Our Taxes?" Caesar: "my Friend, Taxes Are The Chief Business Of A Conqueror Of The World.

Morality Is Not Respectability.

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

Great Art Is Never Produced For Its Own Sake. It Is Too Difficult To Be Worth The Effort.

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

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.

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.

The Happiness Of Credulity Is A Cheap And Dangerous Quality.

If There Is A God

If You Cannot Attain Knowledge Without Torturing A Dog, You Must Do Without Knowledge.

In A Hospital They Throw You Out Into The Street Before You Are Half Cured, But In A Nursing Home They Don't Let You Out Till You Are Dead.

English Is The Easiest Language To Speak Badly.

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

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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.

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

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.

Though Justice Be Thy Plea, Consider This: That In The Course Of Justice None Of Us Should See Salvation. We Do Pray For Mercy, And That Same Prayer Doth Teach Us All To Render The Deeds Of Mercy.

Titles Distinguish The Mediocre, Embarrass The Superior, And Are Disgraced By The Inferior.

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Man's Inhumanity To Man Is Only Surpassed By His Cruelty To Animals

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Every Doctor Will Allow A Colleague To Decimate A Whole Countryside Sooner Than Violate The Bond Of Professional Etiquette By Giving Him Away.

A Fool-proof Method For Sculpting An Elephant: First, Get A Huge Block Of Marble; Then You Chip Away Everything That Doesn't Look Like An Elephant.

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

Make Money And The Whole Nation Will Conspire To Call You A Gentleman.

The Haughty American Nation ... Makes The Negro Clean Its Boots And Then Proves The Moral And Physical Inferiority Of The Negro By The Fact That He Is A Bootblack.

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

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.

In Literature The Ambition Of The Novice Is To Acquire The Literary Language; The Struggle Of The Adept Is To Get Rid Of It.

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

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

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

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

There Is Nothing So Bad Or So Good That You Will Not Find Englishmen Doing It; But You Will Never Find An Englishman In The Wrong. He Does Everything On Principle. He Fights You On Patriotic Principles; He Robs You On Business Principles; He Enslaves You On Imperial Principles; He Bullies You On Manly Principles; He Supports His King On Loyal Principles And Cuts Off His King's Head On Republican Principles.

Those Who Talk Most About The Blessings Of Marriage And The Constancy Of Its Vows Are The Very People Who Declare That If The Chain Were Broken And The Prisoners Left Free To Choose, The Whole Social Fabric Would Fly Asunder. You Cannot Have The Argument Both Ways. If The Prisoner Is Happy, Why Lock Him In? If He Is Not, Why Pretend That He Is?

Reading Made Don Quixote A Gentleman, But Believing What He Read Made Him Mad.

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

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.

A Man Ought To Be Able To Be Fond Of His Wife Without Making A Fool Of Himself About Her.

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

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

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

Vivisection Is A Social Evil Because If It Advances Human Knowledge, It Does So At The Expense Of Human Character.

The Epithet Beautiful Is Used By Surgeons To Describe Operations Which Their Patients Describe As Ghastly, By Physicists To Describe Methods Of Measurement Which Leave Sentimentalists Cold, By Lawyers To Describe Cases Which Ruin All The Parties To Them, And By Lovers To Describe The Objects Of Their Infatuation, However Unattractive They May Appear To The Unaffected Spectators.

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.

My Friend, When A Man Has Anything To Tell In This World, The Difficulty Is Not To Make Him Tell It, But To Prevent Him From Telling It Too Often.

People Get Nothing Out Of Books But What They Bring To Them.

No Sooner Had Jesus Knocked Over The Dragon Of Superstition Than Paul Boldly Set It On Its Legs Again In The Name Of Jesus.

The Joy In Life Is To Be Used For A Purpose. I Want To Be Used Up When I Die.

Perhaps I Had Better Inform My Protestant Readers That The Famous Dogma Of Papal Infallibility Is By Far The Most Modest Pretension Of The Kind In Existence. Compared With Our Infallible Democracies, Our Infallible Medical Councils, Our Infallible Astronomers, Our Infallible Judges, And Our Infallible Parliaments, The Pope Is On His Knees In The Dust Confessing His Ignorance Before The Throne Of God, Asking Only That As To Certain Historical Matters On Which He Has Clearly More Sources Of Information Open To Him Than Anyone Else His Decision Shall Be Taken As Final.

Put An Irishman On The Spit And You Can Always Get Another Irishman To Turn Him.

Ireland And The Irish

Hegel Was Right When He Said That We Learn From History That Men Never Learn Anything From History.

We Are The Living Graves Of Murdered Beasts.

Vegetarian Diet

The Minorities Are Sometimes Right. The Majorities Never.

Activity Is The Only Road To Knowledge.

The Technical History Of Modern Harmony Is A History Of Growth Of Toleration By The Human Ear Of Chords That At First Sounded Discordant And Senseless To The Main Body Of Contemporary Professional Musicians.

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Have You No Morals, Man?' 'can't Afford Them,governor.

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

That Is The Injustice Of A Woman's Lot. A Woman Has To Bring Up Her Children; And That Means To Restrain Them, To Deny Them Things They Want, To Set Them Tasks, To Punish Them When They Do Wrong, To Do All The Unpleasant Things. And Then The Father, Who Has Nothing To Do But Pet Them And Spoil Them, Comes In When All Her Work Is Done And Steals Their Affection From Her.

Gentle Jesus, Meek And Mild' Is A Snivelling Modern Invention, With No Warrant In The Gospels.

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

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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.

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It Is More Dangerous To Be A Great Prophet Or Poet Than To Promote Twenty Companies For Swindling Simple Folk Out Of Their Savings.

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I Do Not, Like The Fundamentalists, Believe That Creation Stopped Six Thousand Years Ago After A Week Of Hard Work. Creation Is Going On All The Time.

I Wish To Boast That Pygmalion Has Been An Extremely Successful Play All Over Europe And North America As Well As At Home. It Is So Intensely And Deliberately Didactic, And Its Subject Is Esteemed So Dry, That I Delight In Throwing It At The Heads Of The Wiseacres Who Repeat The Parrot Cry That Art Should Never Be Didactic. It Goes To Prove My Contention That Art Should Never Be Anything Else.

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

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

People Changing

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

The Stock Actor Is A Stage Calamity

The Conversion Of Paul Was No Conversion At All; It Was Paul Who Converted The Religion That Has Raised One Man Above Sin And Death.

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Music Is The Brandy Of The Damned.

The Sound Body Is The Product Of The Sound Mind.

What Is Life But A Series Of Inspired Follies.

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

If You Demand My Authorities For This And That, I Must Reply That Only Those Who Have Never Hunted Up The Authorities As I Have Believe That There Is Any Authority Who Is Not Contradicted Flatly By Some Other Authority.

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

Our Laws Make Law Impossible; Our Liberties Destroy All Freedom; Our Property Is Organized Robbery; Our Morality An Impudent Hypocrisy; Our Wisdom Is Administered By Inexperienced Or Mal-experienced Dupes; Our Power Wielded By Cowards And Weaklings; And Our Honour False In All Its Points. I Am An Enemy Of The Existing Order For Good Reasons

No Man Can Be A Pure Specialist Without Being In The Strict Sense An Idiot.

The Law Is Equal Before All Of Us; But We Are Not All Equal Before The Law. Virtually There Is One Law For The Rich And Another For The Poor, One Law For The Cunning And Another For The Simple, One Law For The Forceful And Another For The Feeble, One Law For The Ignorant And Another For The Learned, One Law For The Brave And Another For The Timid, And Within Family Limits One Law For The Parent And No Law At All For The Child.

Make Me A Beautiful Word For Doing Things Tomorrow; For That Surely Is A Great And Blessed Invention.

Socialism Is The Same As Communism, Only Better English.

A Man Of My Spiritual Intensity Does Not Eat Corpses.

I Like To Quote Myself Frequently And Often, It Makes Me Sound Much More Intelligent Than I Actually Am.

Capitalism Justified Itself And Was Adopted As An Economic Principle On The Express Ground That It Provides Selfish Motives For Doing Good, And That Human Beings Will Do Nothing Except For Selfish Motives

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

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

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.

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

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.

If You Can Say A Thing With One Stroke, Unanswerably You Have Style; If Not, You Are At Best A Marchande De Plaisir; A Decorative Litt

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

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