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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.

-George Bernard Shaw

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You Can Be A

George Bernard Shaw

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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.

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

The Ordinary Man Is An Anarchist. He Wants To Do As He Likes. He May Want His Neighbour To Be Governed, But He Himself Doesn't Want To Be Governed. He Is Mortally Afraid Of Government Officials And Policemen.

The Worst Cliques Are Those Which Consist Of One Man.

When Asked Which Dog Wins, He Reflected For A Moment And Replied, "the One I Feed The Most."

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Imprisonment, As It Exists Today, Is A Worse Crime Than Any Of Those Committed By Its Victims.

Civilized Society Is One Huge Bourgeoisie: No Nobleman Dares Now Shock His Greengrocer.

To Be A Champion You Must Live Like One.

In An Article On Bunyan Lately Published In The "contemporary Review" - The Only Article On The Subject Worth Reading On The Subject I Ever Saw (yes, Thank You, I Am Familiar With Macaulay's Patronizing Prattle About "the Pilgrim's Progress") Etc.

Any Sort Of Plain Speaking Is Better Than The Nauseous Sham Good Fellowship Our Democratic Public Men Get Up For Shop Use.

If You Take Too Long In Deciding What To Do With Your Life, You'll Find You've Done It.

Nationalism Must Now Be Added To The Refuse Pile Of Superstitions. We Are Now Citizens Of The World, And The Man Who Divides The Race Into Elect Irishmen And Reprobate Foreign Devils (especially Englishmen) Had Better Live On The Blaskets Where He Can Admire Himself Without Disturbance.

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

In My Dreams Is A Country Where The State Is The Church And The Church The People: Three In One And One In Three. It Is A Commonwealth In Which Work Is Play And Play Is Life: Three In One And One In Three. It Is A Temple In Which The Priest Is The Worshiper And The Worshiper The Worshipped: Three In One And One In Three. It Is A Godhead In Which All Life Is Human And All Humanity Divine: Three In One And One In Three.

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

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

The More A Man Possesses Over And Above What He Uses, The More Careworn He Becomes.

Every Dream Is A Prophecy: Every Jest Is An Earnest In The Womb Of Time.

I Was Always Unlawful; I Broke The Law When I Was Born Because My Parents Weren't Married.

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

Financiers Live In A World Of Illusion. They Count On Something Which They Call The Capital Of The Country, Which Has No Existence.

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

Two People Getting Together To Write A Book Is Like Three People Getting Together To Have A Baby. One Of Them Is Superfluous.

Experience Fails To Teach Where There Is No Desire To Learn.

The Writer Who Aims At Producing The Platitudes Which Are "not For An Age, But For All Time" Has His Reward In Being Unreadable Inall Ages.... The Man Who Writes About Himself And His Own Time Is The Only Sort Of Man Who Writes About All People And About All Time.

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

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

During The Last Considerable Epidemic At The Turn Of The Century, I Was A Member Of The Health Committee Of London Borough Council, And I Learned How The Credit Of Vaccination Is Kept Up Statistically By Diagnosing All The Revaccinated Cases (of Smallpox) As Pustular Eczema, Varioloid Or What Not---except Smallpox.

Everything I Eat Has Been Proved By Some Doctor Or Other To Be A Deadly Poison, And Everything I Don't Eat Has Been Proved To Be Indispensable For Life. But I Go Marching On.

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.

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

Where Equality Is Undisputed, So Also Is Subordination.

Hypocrisy ... Is Only Bad When It Is Improperly Used.

Money Is The Most Important Thing In The World. It Represents Health, Strength, Honor, Generosity, And Beauty As Conspicuously As The Want Of It Represents Illness, Weakness, Disgrace, Meanness, And Ugliness.

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.

The Novelties Of One Generation Are Only The Resuscitated Fashions Of The Generation Before Last.

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.

The More Ignorant Men Are, The More Convinced Are They That Their Little Parish And Their Little Chapel Is An Apex To Which Civilization And Philosophy Has Painfully Struggled Up The Pyramid Of Time From A Desert Of Savagery.

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

Hell Is Not All Paved With Bad Intentions.

You Propound A Complicated Arithmetical Problem: Say Cubing A Number Containing Four Digits. Give Me A Slate And Half An Hour's Time, And I Can Produce A Wrong Answer.

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.

Never Fret For An Only Son, The Idea Of Failure Will Never Occur To Him.

Everyone Can See That The People Who Hunt Are The Right People And The People Who Don't Are The Wrong Ones.

Medical Science Is As Yet Very Imperfectly Differentiated From Common Cure-mongering Witchcraft

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It Is Not That I Am So Clever; It Is That Everyone Else Is So Stupid.

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

I Shall Always Be A Flower Girl To Professor Higgins, Because He Always Treats Me As A Flower Girl, And Always Will; But I Know I Can Be A Lady To You, Because You Always Treat Me As A Lady, And Always Will.

There Is Only One Religion, Though There Are A Hundred Versions Of It.

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

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

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

The American Constitution, One Of The Few Modern Political Documents Drawn Up By Men Who Were Forced By The Sternest Circumstances To Think Out What They Really Had To Face, Instead Of Chopping Logic In A University Classroom.

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All Government Is Cruel; For Nothing Is So Cruel As Impunity.

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Well, Sir, You Never Can Tell. That's A Principle In Life With Me, Sir, If You'll Excuse My Having Such A Thing.

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

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.

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Though The Life Force Supplies Us With Its Own Purpose, It Has No Other Brains To Work With Than Those It Has Painfully And Imperfectly Evolved In Our Heads.

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

Every Profession Is A Conspiracy Against The Laity.

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

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A Man Without An Address Is A Vagabond; A Man With Two Addresses Is A Libertine.

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The Longer I Live, The More I Realize That I Am Never Wrong About Anything, And That All The Pains I Have So Humbly Taken To Verify My Notions Have Only Wasted My Time!

What You Are To Do Without Me I Cannot Imagine.

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

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

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

There Is No Subject On Which More Dangerous Nonsense Is Talked And Thought Than Marriage.

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

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People Must Not Be Forced To Adopt Me As Their Favourite Author, Even For Their Own Good.

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

In The Arts Of Peace Man Is A Bungler.

It's A Pity Youth Is Wasted On The Young.

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

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

A Family Is A Tyranny Ruled Over By It's Weakest Member.

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.

Never Repeat Old Grievances.

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.

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.

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

All Young Women Begin By Believing They Can Change And Reform The Men They Marry. They Can't.

I Have To Live For Others And Not For Myself: That's Middle-class Morality.

Don't Waste Time Collecting Other People's Autographs; Rather Devote It To Making Your Own Autograph Worth Collecting.

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One Man That Has A Mind And Knows It Can Always Beat Ten Men Who Haven't And Don't.

Do Not Do Unto Others As You Expect They Should Do Unto You. Their Tastes May Not Be The Same.

The World Is Populated In The Main By People Who Should Not Exist

Take Care To Get What You Like Or You Will Be Forced To Like What You Get.

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The Buried Truth Germinates And Breaks Through To The Light.

The Only Secrets Are The Secrets That Keep Themselves.

Keeping Secrets

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

Our First Duty, To Which Every Other Consideration Should Be Sacrificed, Is Not To Be Poor.

Life Is Too Short For Men To Take It Seriously.

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

We Know There Is Intention And Purpose In The Universe, Because There Is Intention And Purpose In Us.

I Hate Performers Who Debase Great Works Of Art; I Long For Their Annihilation.

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The Man Who Writes About Himself And His Own Time Is The Only Man Who Writes About All People And About All Time.

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The Ideal Love Affair Should Be Conducted By Post.

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

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.

A Vegetarian Is Not A Person Who Lives On Vegetables, Any More Than A Catholic Is A Person Who Lives On Cats.

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

Think Of The Fierce Energy Concentrated In An Acorn! You Bury It In The Ground, And It Explodes Into An Oak! Bury A Sheep, And Nothing Happens But Decay.

Women Have Been A Ghastly Nuisance In My Life.

If You Eliminate Smoking And Gambling, You Will Be Amazed To Find That Almost All An Englishman's Pleasures Can Be, And Mostly Are, Shared By His Dog.

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

Every Fool Believes What His Teachers Tell Him, And Calls His Credulity Science Or Morality As Confidently As His Father Called It Divine Revelation.

Life Contains But Two Tragedies. One Is Not To Get Your Heart's Desire; The Other Is To Get 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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I Am Giving You Examples Of The Fact That This Creature Man, Who In His Own Selfish Affairs Is A Coward To The Backbone, Will Fight For An Idea Like A Hero. . . . I Tell You, Gentlemen, If You Can Shew A Man A Piece Of What He Now Calls God's Work To Do, And What He Will Later Call By Many New Names, You Can Make Him Entirely Reckless Of The Consequences To Himself Personally.

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.

There Is In Man A Specific Lust For Cruelty Which Infects Even His Passion Of Pity And Makes It Savage.

What Is The Use Of Straining After An Amiable View Of Things, When A Cynical View Is Most Likely To Be The True One?.

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

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

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

It's So Hard To Know What To Do When One Wishes Earnestly To Do Right.

I Never Expect A Soldier To Think.

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

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

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

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.

He Knows Nothing And Thinks He Knows Everything. That Points Clearly To A Political Career.

Audacious Ribald: Your Laughter Will Finish In Hideous Boredom Before Morning.

Heaven, As Conventionally Conceived, Is A Place So Inane, So Dull, So Useless, So Miserable That Nobody Has Ever Ventured To Describe A Whole Day In Heaven, Though Plenty Of People Have Described A Day At The Seaside.

If A Man Is Indolent, Let Him Be Poor. If He Is Drunken, Let Him Be Poor.... Also--somewhat Inconsistently--blessed Are The Poor!

Of All The Damnable Waste Of Human Life That Ever Was Invented, Clerking Is The Worst.

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

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.

To Make Democracy Work, You Need An Aristocratic Democracy. To Make Aristocracy Work, You Need A Democratic Aristocracy.

Peace Is Not Only Better Than War, But Infinitely More Arduous.

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.

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What God Hath Joined Together No Man Shall Put Asunder: God Will Take Care Of That.

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

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

All Great Art And Literature Is Propaganda.

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Unbounded Hopes Were Placed On Each Successive Extension Of The Electoral Franchise, Culminating In The Enfranchisement Of Women.these Hopes Have Been Disappointed, Because The Voters, Male And Female, Being Politically Untrained And Uneducated, Have (a) No Grasp Of Constructive Measures; (b) Loathe Taxation As Such; (c) Dislike Being Governed At All; And (d) Dread And Resent Any Extension Of Official Interference As An Encroachment On Their Personal Liberty.

If You Do Things Merely Because You Think Some Other Fool Expects You To Do Them, And He Expects You To Do Them Because He Thinks You Expect Him To Expect You To Do Them, It Will End In Everybody Doing What Nobody Wants To Do, Which Is In My Opinion A Silly State Of Things.

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

I Hope You Have Lost Your Good Looks, For While They Last Any Fool Can Adore You, And The Adoration Of Fools Is Bad For The Soul.

Brains Are Not Everything.

Golf Is Typical Capitalist Luncay.

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There May Be Some Doubt As To Who Are The Best People To Have Charge Of Children, But There Can Be No Doubt That Parents Are The Worst.

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

You Can Always Tell An Old Soldier By The Inside Of His Holsters And Cartridge Boxes. The Young Ones Carry Pistols And Cartridges; The Old Ones, Grub.

Gambling Promises The Poor What Property Performs For The Rich-something For Nothing.

A Sensitive Boy's Humiliations May Be Very Good Fun For Ordinary Thick-skinned Grown-ups; But To The Boy Himself Theyareso Acute, So Ignominious, That He Cannot Confess Themcannot But Deny Them Passionately.

Go Anywhere In England Where There Are Natural Wholesome, Contented And Really Nice English People; And What Do You Find? That The Stables Are The Real Centre Of The Household.

For Four Wicked Centuries The World Has Dreamed This Foolish Dream Of Efficiency; And The End Is Not Yet. But The End Will Come.

As Long As More People Will Pay Admission To A Theater To See A Naked Body Than To See A Naked Brain, The Drama Will Languish.

It Is Very Doubtful Whether Man Is Enough Of A Political Animal To Produce A Good, Sensible, Serious And Efficient Constitution. All The Evidence Is Against It.

Worst Of All, There Is No Sign Of Any Relaxation Of Antisemitism. Logically It Has Nothing To Do With Fascism. But The Human Raceis Imitative Rather Than Logical; And As Fascism Spreads Antisemitism Spreads.

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

I Work As My Father Drank.

Money Is Indeed The Most Important Thing In The World; And All Sound And Successful Personal And National Morality Should Have This Fact For Its Basis.

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.

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

Could Have Been

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