Top 500 George Bernard Shaw Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men’s imperfections, and conceal your own.”

— George Bernard Shaw

152. “Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.”

— George Bernard Shaw

153. “Every dream is a prophecy: every jest is an earnest in the womb of Time.”

— George Bernard Shaw

154. “We must all share in the evils of the world or move to another planet.”

— George Bernard Shaw

155. “The goal of an artist is to create the definitive work that cannot be surpassed.”

— George Bernard Shaw

156. “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.”

— George Bernard Shaw

157. “Liberty is the breath of life to nations.”

— George Bernard Shaw

158. “The Indian way of life provides the vision of the natural, real way of life. We veil ourselves with unnatural masks. On the face of India are the tender expressions which carry the mark of the Creators hand.”

— George Bernard Shaw

159. “The 100% American is 99% idiot.”

— George Bernard Shaw

160. “You cannot be a hero without being a coward.”

— George Bernard Shaw

161. “Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.”

— George Bernard Shaw

162. “I believe in the discipline of silence, and could talk for hours about it.”

— George Bernard Shaw

163. “Heartbreak is life educating us.”

— George Bernard Shaw

164. “I have my own soul. My own spark of divine fire.”

— George Bernard Shaw

165. “Life is a constant becoming: all stages lead to the beginning of others.”

— George Bernard Shaw

166. “Human beings are the only animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.”

— George Bernard Shaw

167. “My way of joking is to tell the truth.”

— George Bernard Shaw

168. “When you loved me I gave you the whole sun and stars to play with. I gave you eternity in a single moment, strength of the mountains in one clasp of your arms, and the volume of all the seas in one impulse of your soul.”

— George Bernard Shaw

169. “Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parent.”

— George Bernard Shaw

170. “Get married, but never to a man who is home all day.”

— George Bernard Shaw

171. “The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.”

— George Bernard Shaw

172. “If you can’t appreciate what you’ve got, you’d better get what you can appreciate.”

— George Bernard Shaw

173. “The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated.”

— George Bernard Shaw

174. “From a very early age, I’ve had to interrupt my education to go to school.”

— George Bernard Shaw

175. “Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen to the world.”

— George Bernard Shaw

176. “Education can and should do much influence social, moral and intellectual discovery by stimulating critical attitudes of thought in the young.”

— George Bernard Shaw

177. “Morals are a luxury of the rich.”

— George Bernard Shaw

178. “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.”

— George Bernard Shaw

179. “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.”

— George Bernard Shaw

180. “Opera is when a tenor and soprano want to make love, but are prevented from doing so by a baritone.”

— George Bernard Shaw

181. “Hell is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.”

— George Bernard Shaw

182. “There is no accomplishment so easy to acquire as politeness and none more profitable.”

— George Bernard Shaw

183. “This planet is obviously being used as an insane asylum by other planets.”

— George Bernard Shaw

184. “Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.”

— George Bernard Shaw

185. “I no longer desire happiness: life is nobler than that.”

— George Bernard Shaw

186. “You cannot learn to skate without making yourself ridiculous – the ice of life is slippery.”

— George Bernard Shaw

187. “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.”

— George Bernard Shaw

188. “Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.”

— George Bernard Shaw

189. “Telling the truth is the funniest joke in the world.”

— George Bernard Shaw

190. “The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.”

— George Bernard Shaw

191. “When God created man and woman, he did not take a patent. That’s why any imbecile has been able to do so ever since.”

— George Bernard Shaw

192. “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?”

— George Bernard Shaw

193. “It is a woman’s business to get married as soon as possible, and a man’s to keep unmarried as long as he can.”

— George Bernard Shaw

194. “In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.”

— George Bernard Shaw

195. “Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.”

— George Bernard Shaw

196. “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!”

— George Bernard Shaw

197. “The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.”

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

199. “Socialism is the same as Communism, only better English.”

— George Bernard Shaw

200. “Those who admire modern civilization usually identify it with the steam engine and the electric telegraph.”

— George Bernard Shaw