George Bernard Shaw Quotes - Page 35

• The medical profession (is) a conspiracy to hide its own shortcomings. No doubt the same may be said of all professions. They are all conspiracies against the laity... (U)ntil there is a practicable alternative to blind trust in the doctor, the truth about the doctor is so terrible that we dare not face it.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Doctors, Doubt, May

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• The greatest evils and the worst of crimes is poverty; our first duty, a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Evil, Poverty, Firsts

  Major Barbara (1907) preface

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

  George Bernard Shaw

  Accomplishment, Moral, Sin

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.5803, e-artnow

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• I do not, like the Fundamentalists, believe that creation stopped six thousand years ago after a week of hard work. Creation is going on all the time.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Believe, Hard Work, Years

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.6042, e-artnow

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• You have a choice of trusting the natural stability of gold, or the honesty and intelligence of members of government.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Honesty, Government, Choices

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• They tell me that So-and-So, who does not write prefaces, is no charlatan. Well, I am. I first caught the ear of the British public on a cart in Hyde Park, to the blaring of brass bands,and this . . . because . . . I am a natural-born mountebank.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Writing, Brass Bands, Doe

  George Bernard Shaw (2006). “Three Plays for Puritans”, p.36, Penguin UK

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• God help England if she had no Scots to think for her.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Thinking, Scotland, England

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “George Bernard Shaw: The Collected Plays (Illustrated): 60 plays including Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, The Apple Cart, Cymbeline, Androcles And The Lion, The Man Of Destiny, The Inca Of Perusalem and Macbeth Skit”, p.3448, e-artnow

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• I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Evil, Forgiving, Form

  George Bernard Shaw (2008). “Pygmalion and Major Barbara”, p.10, Bantam Classics

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• The statesman cannot govern without stability of belief, true or false.

  George Bernard Shaw

  True Or False, Belief, Stability

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• Conceive. That is the word that means both the beginning in imagination and the end in creation.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Mean, Imagination, Creation

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “George Bernard Shaw: The Collected Plays (Illustrated): 60 plays including Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, The Apple Cart, Cymbeline, Androcles And The Lion, The Man Of Destiny, The Inca Of Perusalem and Macbeth Skit”, p.2919, e-artnow

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• The trouble with the media is that it seems unable to distinguish between the end of the world and a bicycle accident.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Truth, Knowledge, Media

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• Affection between adults - if they are really adult in mind and not merely grown up children - and creatures so relatively selfish and cruel as children necessarily are without knowing it or meaning it, cannot be called natural.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Children, Selfish, Knowing

  George Bernard Shaw (2004). “A Treatise on Parents and Children”, p.31, 1st World Publishing

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• What is the use of straining after an amiable view of things, when a cynical view is most likely to be the true one?.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Funny, Sarcastic, Sarcasm

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.776, e-artnow

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• As 99 per cent of English authors and 100 per cent of American ones [authors] are just such imbeciles, managers and publishers make a practice of asking for every right the author possesses.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Practice, Asking, Imbeciles

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• When a lion meets another with a louder roar, the first lion thinks the last a bore.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Thinking, Lions, Lasts

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.3418, e-artnow

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• If you do not say a thing in an irritating way, you may as well not say it at all because people will not trouble themselves about anything that does not trouble them.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Fear, People, Doe

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• A photographer is like a cod, which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Photography, Maturity, Order

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• What is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Matter, Rich Poor, Riches And Poors

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “George Bernard Shaw: Collected Articles, Lectures, Essays and Letters: Thoughts and Studies from the Renowned Dramaturge and Author of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Pygmalion, Arms and The Man, Saint Joan, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion”, p.316, e-artnow

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• The utmost I can bear for myself in my best days is that I was one of the hundred best playwrights
  in the world, which is hardly a supreme distinction.

  George Bernard Shaw

  World, Bears, Hundred

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• The public want actresses, because they think all actresses bad. They don't want music or poetry because they know that both are good. So actors and actresses thrive and poets and composers starve.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Thinking, Want, Actresses

  "Love Among the Artists". Book by George Bernard Shaw, 1900.

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• You are my inspiration and my folly. You are my light across the sea, my million nameless joys, and my day's wage. You are my divinity, my madness, my selfishness, my transfiguration and purification. You are my rapscallionly fellow vagabond, my tempter and star. I want you.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Relationship, Soulmate, Stars

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• Every man to whom salvation is offered has an inalienable natural right to say 'No, thank you: I prefer to retain my full moral responsibility: it is not good for me to be able to load a scapegoat with my sins: I should be less careful how I committed them if I knew they would cost me nothing.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Responsibility, Men, Cost

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.3238, e-artnow

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• Reviewing has one advantage over suicide: in suicide you take it out on yourself; in reviewing you take it out on other people.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Suicide, People, Criticism

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• I lay my eternal curse on whomsoever shall now or at any time hereafter make schoolbooks of my works and make me hated as Shakespeare is hated. My plays were not designed as instruments of torture. All the schools that lust after them get this answer, and will never get any other.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Book, School, Play

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• If a man is indolent, let him be poor. If he is drunken, let him be poor.... Also--somewhat inconsistently--blessed are the poor!

  George Bernard Shaw

  Blessed, Men, Poor

  George Bernard Shaw (2008). “Pygmalion and Major Barbara”, p.12, Bantam Classics

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