Top 500 George Bernard Shaw Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.”

— George Bernard Shaw

352. “The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.”

— George Bernard Shaw

353. “Gardening is the only unquestionably useful job.”

— George Bernard Shaw

354. “Wicked people means people who have no love: therefore, they have no shame. They have the power to ask love because the don’t need it: they have the power to offer it because they have none to give.”

— George Bernard Shaw

355. “Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.”

— George Bernard Shaw

Featured in: Book Quotes

356. “History, sir, will tell lies as usual.”

— George Bernard Shaw

357. “The love of economy is the root of all virtue.”

— George Bernard Shaw

358. “Never resist temptation: prove all things: hold fast that which is good.”

— George Bernard Shaw

359. “Marriage is the most licentious of human institutions.”

— George Bernard Shaw

360. “If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you’ll find you’ve done it.”

— George Bernard Shaw

361. “You have nothing to do but mention the quantum theory, and people will take your voice for the voice of science, and belive anything.”

— George Bernard Shaw

362. “The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.”

— George Bernard Shaw

363. “Effectiveness of assertion is the alpha and omega of style.”

— George Bernard Shaw

364. “The criminal law is no use to decent people.”

— George Bernard Shaw

365. “Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. If all economists were laid end to end they would not reach a conclusion.”

— George Bernard Shaw

366. “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.”

— George Bernard Shaw

367. “We are members one of another; so that you cannot injure or help your neighbor without injuring or helping yourself.”

— George Bernard Shaw

368. “The real pleasure of one’s life is the devotion to a great objective of one’s consideration.”

— George Bernard Shaw

Featured in: Real Quotes

369. “Marriage is to me apostasy, profanation of the sanctuary of my soul, violation of my manhood, sale of my birthright, shameful surrender, ignominious capitulation, acceptance of defeat.”

— George Bernard Shaw

370. “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.”

— George Bernard Shaw

371. “Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her.”

— George Bernard Shaw

Featured in: Strong Quotes

372. “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.”

— George Bernard Shaw

373. “I am justified. For I chose wisdom and the knowledge of good and evil ; and now there is no evil; and wisdom and good are one. It is enough.”

— George Bernard Shaw

374. “In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language; the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.”

— George Bernard Shaw

375. “Schools must not become the agencies through which propaganda advocated by any section of society is spread. The method of control always a crucial problem should be in harmony with the fundamental values and principles of the states and the entire e.”

— George Bernard Shaw

376. “Taxes are the chief business of a conqueror of the world.”

— George Bernard Shaw

377. “Spend all you have before you die, and do not outlive yourself.”

— George Bernard Shaw

378. “There is only one person an English girl hates more than she hates her elder sister; and that is her mother.”

— George Bernard Shaw

379. “If women were as fastidious as men, morally or physically, there would be an end of the race.”

— George Bernard Shaw

380. “Those who understand evil pardon it.”

— George Bernard Shaw

381. “We educate one another; and we cannot do this if half of us consider the other half not good enough to talk to.”

— George Bernard Shaw

382. “The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.”

— George Bernard Shaw

383. “Plato long ago pointed out the importance of being governed by men with sufficient sense of responsibility and comprehension of public duties to be very reluctant to undertake the work of governing.”

— George Bernard Shaw

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

— George Bernard Shaw

385. “The salvation of the world depends on the men who will not take evil good-humouredly, and whose laughter destroys the fool instead of encouraging him.”

— George Bernard Shaw

386. “I was a freethinker before I knew how to think.”

— George Bernard Shaw

387. “Leisure may be defined as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes, labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation.”

— George Bernard Shaw

388. “There is nothing in religion but fiction.”

— George Bernard Shaw

389. “The capacity of any conqueror is more likely than not to be an illusion produced by the incapacity of his adversary.”

— George Bernard Shaw

390. “Only Lawyers and mental defectives are automatically exempt for jury duty.”

— George Bernard Shaw

391. “Happiness and Beauty are by-products.”

— George Bernard Shaw

392. “Women have been a ghastly nuisance in my life.”

— George Bernard Shaw

393. “Literature is like any other trade; you will never sell anything unless you go to the right shop.”

— George Bernard Shaw

394. “If you leave your art, the world will beat you back to it. The world has not an ambition worth sharing, or a prize worth handling.”

— George Bernard Shaw

395. “The doctor learns that if he gets ahead of the superstitions of his patients he is a ruined man; and the result is that he instinctively takes care not to get ahead of them.”

— George Bernard Shaw

396. “Our ideals, like the gods of old, are constantly demanding human sacrifices.”

— George Bernard Shaw

397. “The cinema is going to form the mind of England. The national conscience, the national ideals and tests of conduct, will be those of the film.”

— George Bernard Shaw

398. “A woman whose face looked as if it had been made of sugar and someone had licked it.”

— George Bernard Shaw

399. “I assume that to prevent illness in later life, you should never have been born at all.”

— George Bernard Shaw

400. “My schooling did me a great deal of harm and no good whatever; it was simply dragging a child’s soul through the dirt.”

— George Bernard Shaw