George Bernard Shaw

"The confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error."

"Economy is the art of making the most of life. The love of economy is the root of all virtue."

"Do not do unto others as you would expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same."

"If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a foot-rule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved."

"Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."

"He who confuses political liberty with freedom and political equality with similarity has never thought for five minutes about either."

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."

"The duke inquires contemptuously whether his gamekeeper is the equal of the Astronomer Royal; but he insists that they shall both be hanged equally if they murder him."

"Where equality is undisputed, so also is subordination."

"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry."

"The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the parent's first duty."

"Every fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his credulity science or morality as confidently as his father called it divine revelation."

"No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot."

"The man who has graduated from the flogging block at Eton to the bench from which he sentences the garrotter to be flogged is the same social product as the garrotter who has been kicked by his father and cuffed by his mother until he has grown strong enough to throttle and rob the rich citizen whose money he desires."

"Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men."

"When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport: when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity. The distinction between Crime and Justice is no greater."

"It is not necessary to replace a guillotined criminal: it is necessary to replace a guillotined social system."

"There are no perfectly honorable men; but every true man has one main point of honor and a few minor ones."

"Beware of the man whose god is in the skies."

"Self-denial is not a virtue: it is only the effect of prudence on rascality."

"Obedience simulates subordination as fear of the police simulates honesty."

"Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices."

"In a stupid nation the man of genius becomes a god: everybody worships him and nobody does his will."

"Riches and Art are spurious receipts for the production of Happiness and Beauty."

"He who desires a lifetime of happiness with a beautiful woman desires to enjoy the taste of wine by keeping his mouth always full of it."

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

"The more a man possesses over and above what he uses, the more careworn he becomes."

"In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness."

"No elaboration of physical or moral accomplishment can atone for the sin of parasitism."

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

"Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her."

"Decency is Indecency's Conspiracy of Silence."

"Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience. If we could learn from mere experience, the stones of London would be wiser than its wisest men."

"No age or condition is without its heroes. The least incapable general in a nation is its Cæsar, the least imbecile statesman its Solon, the least confused thinker its Socrates, the least commonplace poet its Shakespeare."

"The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown."

"The reformer for whom the world is not good enough finds himself shoulder to shoulder with him that is not good enough for the world."

"Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing."

"Do not mistake your objection to defeat for an objection to fighting, your objection to being a slave for an objection to slavery, your objection to not being as rich as your neighbor for an objection to poverty. The cowardly, the insubordinate, and the envious share your objections."

"Those who understand evil pardon it."

"When a heretic wishes to avoid martyrdom he speaks of "Orthodoxy, True and False" and demonstrates that the True is his heresy."

"If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself."

"Shaw. So ernst, wie der heiter tut, ist er gar nicht."

"„England und Amerika sind zwei Länder, die durch die gemeinsame Sprache getrennt sind."

"Wenn ich scherzen will, sage ich die Wahrheit. Das ist immer noch der größte Spaß auf Erden."

"Je mehr ein Mensch sich schämt, desto anständiger ist er."

"Gleichheit ist der beste Prüfstein zur Unterscheidung zwischen einem echten Sozialisten und einer nur treuherzig entrüsteten Seele, die Mitleid mit den Armen hat."

"Das größte Übel, das wir unseren Mitmenschen antun können, ist nicht, sie zu hassen, sondern ihnen gegenüber gleichgültig zu sein. Das ist absolute Unmenschlichkeit."

"Ich zitiere mich oft selber. Ich finde, es bringt Attraktivität in das Gespräch."