Bernard Shaw Quotes

If a man called Christmas Day a mere hypocritical excuse for drunkenness and gluttony, that would be false, but it would have a fact hidden in it somewhere. But when Bernard Shaw says the Christmas Day is only a conspiracy kept up by poulterers and wine merchants from strictly business motives, then he says something which is not so much false as startling and arrestingly foolish. He might as well say that the two sexes were invented by jewellers who wanted to sell wedding rings.

Rees's First Law of Quotations: When in doubt, ascribe all quotations to George Bernard Shaw.

Nobody can read Freud without realizing that he was the scientific equivalent of another nuisance, George Bernard Shaw.

I must say Bernard Shaw is greatly improved by music.

When Jennie, mother of Winston Churchill invited playwright George Bernard Shaw to lunch, he telegraphed: "Certainly not. What have I done to provoke such an attack on my well-known habits?" She replied, "Know nothing of your habits; hope they are better than your manners."

In two thousand years all our generals and politicians may be forgotten, but Einstein and Madame Curie and Bernard Shaw and Stravinsky will keep the memory of our age alive.

People believe pictures. It's a photograph that's in your passport, not a painting. Now, George Bernard Shaw said, 'I would exchange every painting of Christ for one snapshot.' That's what the power of photography is.

At 83, George Bernard Shaw's mind was perhaps not quite as good as it used to be, but it was still better than anyone else's.

Those were the days in this country where H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw and Conan Doyle could have influence, and thats gone, thats true. But I dont think we have less influence in the hearts and minds of readers. I think, if anything, we have just as much, if not more.

If a farmer calls me to a sick animal, he couldn't care less if I were George Bernard Shaw.

George Bernard Shaw of England stopped over just long enough to make one speech in Bombay, India, started a war and 100 Indians killed each other. That's what I call good speech-making. The only enthusiasm any of our speakers can rouse is a demand to kill the speaker.

I don't believe in morality . I'm a disciple of Bernard Shaw.

Bernard Shaw remains the only model we have of what the citizen of a democracy should be: an informed participant in all things we deem important to the society and the individual.

As George Bernard Shaw observed: "All great truths begin as blasphemies." Yet I have to say, the idea that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos does not seem terribly radical to me, nor does the notion that we could be receiving help from outside of our dimension.

Unless you are a Bernard Shaw you find a preface a most embarrassing business.

Erik Erikson has commented: Potentially creative men like (Bernard) Shaw build the personal fundament of their work during a self-decreed moratorium, during which they often starve themselves, socially, erotically, and, at last but not least, nutritionally, in order to let the grosser weeds die out, and make way for the growth of their inner garden.

George Bernard Shaw was right. He summed it all up when he said: "The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not." So don't bother to think about it! Spit on your hands and get busy. Your blood will start circulating; your mind will start ticking-and pretty soon this whole positive upsurge of life in your body will drive worry from your mind. Get busy. Keep busy. It's the cheapest kind of medicine there is on this earth-and one of the best.

As yet, Bernard Shaw hasn't become prominent enough to have any enemies, but none of his friends like him.

I hate Bernard Shaw because he says that life is compromise.

Deploring change is the unchangeable habit of all Englishmen. If you find any important figures who really like change, such as Bernard Shaw, Keir Hardie, Lloyd George, Selfridge or Disraeli, you will find that they are not really English at all, but Irish, Scotch, Welsh, American or Jewish. Englishmen make changes, sometimes great changes. But, secretly or openly, they always deplore them.

The word "utopia" has two meanings. It means both "good place" and "nowhere". That's the way it should be. The happiest places, I think, are the ones that reside just this side of paradise. The perfect person would be insufferable to live with; likewise, we wouldn't want to live in the perfect place, either. "A life time of happiness! No man could bear it: It would be hell on earth," wrote George Bernard Shaw, in his play Man and Superman.

Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in Greek.

Why aren't people more successful? Because most people do not select and pursue a vision without regard for other objectives. Most people shift from one activity to another without any focused or directed purpose, naively assuming that things will take care of themselves or will be taken care of by others. George Bernard Shaw said, "The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them."

During the last decades, films about the black experience have been produced, directed, and even scripted by white men. Some of them are excellent. But most reflect George Bernard Shaw’s warning that 'if you do not tell your stories others will tell them for you and they will vulgarize and degrade you.'

It became quite clear to me that the Natural Law mystique, in Catholic, libertarian or neo-pagan forms, remains basically a set of rhetorical strategies to hypnotize others into the state which Bernard Shaw called "barbarism" and defined as 'the belief that the laws of one's own tribe are the laws of the universe'.

The greatest artists, saints, philosophers, and, until quite recent times, scientists... have all assumed that the New Testament promise of eternal life is valid.... I'd rather be wrong with Dante and Shakespeare and Milton, with Augustine of Hippo and Francis of Assisi, with Dr. Johnson, Blake, and Dostoevsky than right with Voltaire, Rousseau, the Huxleys, Herbert Spencer, H. G. Wells, and Bernard Shaw.

The way Bernard Shaw believes in himself is very refreshing in these atheistic days when so many people believe in no God at all.

Churchill was one of the few men I have met who even in the flesh give me the impression of genius. George Bernard Shaw is another. It is amusing to know that each thinks the other is overrated.

While browsing in a second-hand bookshop one day, George Bernard Shaw was amused to find a copy of one of his own works which he himself had inscribed for a friend: "To ----, with esteem, George Bernard Shaw." He immediately purchased the book and returned it to the friend with a second inscription: "With renewed esteem, George Bernard Shaw.

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.

George Bernard Shaw said that thinking was the greatest of all human endeavors, but I would say that feeling was. Allowing yourself to feel things, to feel love or wrath, hatred, rage.

I made use of the college library by borrowing books other than scientific books, such as all of the plays by George Bernard Shaw, the writing of Edgar Allan Poe. The college library helped me to develop a broader aspect on life.

George Bernard Shaw writes like a Pakistani who has learned English when he was twelve years old in order to become an accountant.

Concerning no subject would [George Bernard] Shaw be deterred by the minor accident of total ignorance from penning a definitive opinion.

My toils in the quotation field have led me to formulate two or three laws about the way people use and abuse quotations. My first law is: When in doubt, ascribe all quotations to Bernard Shaw - which I don't mean to be taken literally, but as a general observation of the habit people have of attaching remarks to the nearest obvious speaker. Churchill, Wilde, Orson Welles and Alexander Woollcott are other useful figures upon whom to father remarks when you don't know who really said them.