George Bernard Shaw

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

“A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.”

“A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.”

“Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.”

“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”

“Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it.”

“Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.”

“Cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral excuse, and pretense of reluctance.”

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

“Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.”

“Democracy substitutes selection by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.”

“Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.”

“Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.”

“Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.”

“He knows nothing; he thinks he knows everything--that clearly points to a political career.”

“I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.”

“If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.”

“If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must man be of learning from experience.”

“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”

“It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not the opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed the same kind.”

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”

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

“Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

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

“Modern poverty is not the poverty that was blest in the Sermon on the Mount.”

“My specialty is being right when other people are wrong.”

“No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office.” 

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

“Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.”

“Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.”

“Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.”

“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, they make them.”

“Style is effectiveness of assertion.”

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.”

“The haughty American nation... makes the Negro clean its boots and then proves the moral and physical inferiority of the Negro by the fact that he is a bootblack.”

“The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed but that he cannot believe anyone else.”

“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.”

“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.”

“The road to ignorance is paved with good editions.”

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

“The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.”

“There is no sincerer love than the love of food.”

“Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.”

“To the person with a toothache, even if the world is tottering, there is nothing more important than a visit to a dentist.”

“Very few people can afford to be poor.”

“We should have had socialism already, but for the socialists.”

“What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.”

“When a man wants to murder a tiger, it's called sport; when a tiger wants to murder him, it's called ferocity.”

“When you prevent me from doing anything I want to do, that is persecution; but when I prevent you from doing anything you want to do, that is law, order and morals.”

“Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.”

“You see things; and you ask ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were, and I say, ‘Why not?’ "