Top 500 George Bernard Shaw Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “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

Featured in: Real Quotes

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

— George Bernard Shaw

153. “People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.”

— George Bernard Shaw

154. “God made the world as an artist and that is why the world must learn from its artists.”

— George Bernard Shaw

155. “Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men’s imperfections, and conceal your own.”

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

157. “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

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

— George Bernard Shaw

159. “Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him.”

— George Bernard Shaw

160. “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

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

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

165. “Heartbreak is life educating us.”

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

170. “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

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

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

180. “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

181. “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

182. “I’m an atheist and I thank God for it.”

— George Bernard Shaw

183. “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

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

— George Bernard Shaw

185. “We all go about longing for love: it is the first need of our natures, the loudest cry of our hearts.”

— George Bernard Shaw

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

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

— George Bernard Shaw

187. “Ireland, sir, for good or evil, is like no other place under heaven, and no man can touch its sod or breathe its air without becoming better or worse.”

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

190. “The most sincere form of love is love for food.”

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

192. “I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.”

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

194. “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

195. “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

197. “I have to live for others and not for myself: that’s middle-class morality.”

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw