George Bernard Shaw Quotes

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

Many a sinner has played himself into heaven on the trombone.

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

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

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

A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.

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 the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you’re the window through which you must see the world.

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.


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.

People are always blaming 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 the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.

The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.

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.

There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.

I would exchange every painting of Christ for one snapshot.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

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

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but whoever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?