"[Man] progresses in all things by making a fool of himself."
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Quote collection
George Bernard Shaw quotes (page 44 of 68)
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"When you prevent me from doing anything I want to do, that is persecution; when I prevent you from doing anything you want to do, that is law, order, and morals."
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"Two people getting together to write a book is like three people getting together to have a baby. One of them is superfluous."
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"Money enables us to get what we want instead of what other people think we want."
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"It's easier to replace a dead man than a good picture."
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"If there is anything I hate in a woman, it's want of character."
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"What I say today everybody will say tomorrow, though they will not remember who put it into their heads. Indeed they will be right for I never remember who puts things into my head : it is the Zeitgeist."
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"The reasonable man will adjust to the demands of his environment. The unreasonable man expects his environment to adjust to his own needs. Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man."
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"Women are not angels. They are as foolish as men in many ways; but they have had to devote themselves to life whilst men have had to devote themselves to death; and that makes a vital difference in male and female religion. Women have been forced to fear whilst men have been forced to dare: the heroism of a woman is to nurse and protect life, and of a man to destroy it and court death."
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"The buried truth germinates and breaks through to the light."
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"There have been summits of civilization at which heretics like Socrates , who was killed because he was wiser than his neighbors, have not been tortured, but ordered to kill themselves in the most painless manner known to their judges. But from that summit there was a speedy relapse into our present savagery."
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"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."
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"It is quite useless to declare that all men are born free if you deny that they are born good . Guarantee a man's goodness and his liberty will take care of itself. To guarantee his freedom on condition that you approve of his moral character is formally to abolish all freedom whatsoever, as every man's liberty is at the mercy of a moral indictment which any fool can trump up against everyone who violates custom, whether as a prophet or as a rascal."
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"Fine art is the only teacher except torture."
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"Though the Life Force supplies us with its own purpose, it has no other brains to work with than those it has painfully and imperfectly evolved in our heads."
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"You can feel nothing but a torment, and believe nothing but a lie. You will not raise your head to look at all the miracles of life that surround you; but you will run ten miles to see a fight or a death."
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"The thief who is in prison is not necessarily more dishonest than his fellows at large, but mostly one who, through ignorance or stupidity [or racism or poverty! - Draffan] steals in a way that is not customary. He snatches a loaf from the baker's counter and is promptly run into gaol. Another man snatches bread from the table of hundreds of widows and orphans and similar credulous souls who do not know the ways of company promoters; and, as likely as not, he is run into Parliament."
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"I become more convinced that beings from other planets are using the Earth as a lunatic asylum"
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"All autobiographies are lies. I do not mean unconscious, unintentional lies: I mean deliberate lies."
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"Religion is a good invention in times of stress."
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