George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

“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 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 whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it over to future generations.” 

“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. 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.”

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so sure of themselves, and wiser people are full of doubts.”

“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.” 

v  Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.

v  We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

v  The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

v Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.
 

v  Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

v  We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
 

v Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
 

v  People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

v  If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
 

v  Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; do not outlive yourself.

v  A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

v  Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.

v  Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

v  Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

v  Some look at things that are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not?

v  Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal your own.

v  There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.

v  It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

v  The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

v  The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.

v  Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

v  I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

v  The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.

v   All great truths begin as blasphemies.

v  When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.

v  A man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

v  No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.

v  The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.

v  A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.

v  Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.
 

v  You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

v  The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

v  Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

v  Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

v  If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people's opinions will rush in from all quarters.

v  It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.

v  One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.

v  The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

                                          The only secrets are the secrets that keep themselves.

v  Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles.

v  We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

v  Lack of money is the root of all evil.

v  Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.

v  The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.

v  It's so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

v  Most people do not pray; they only beg.
 

v  You cannot be a hero without being a coward.

v  What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.

v  All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.

v  What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.

v  No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious.

v  Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

v  Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.

v   My reputation grows with every failure.

v  If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn't be anything for us to do.

v  In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.
 

v  We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

v  Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

v  Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.

v  Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.

v  Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.

v  Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it.

v  We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

v  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.

v  The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.