"The policy of letting things alone, in the practical sense that the Government should never interfere with business or go into business itself, is called Laisser-faire by economists and politicians. It has broken down so completely in practice that it is now discredited; but it was all the fashion in politics a hundred years ago, and is still influentially advocated by men of business and their backers who naturally would like to be allowed to make money as they please without regard to the interest of the public."
Quote collection
George Bernard Shaw quotes (page 49 of 68)
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"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."
"When you read a biography remember that the truth is never fit for publication."
"It is not the number of years we have behind us, but the number we have before us, that makes us careful and responsible and determined to find out the truth about everything."
"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."
"When a lion meets another with a louder roar, the first lion thinks the last a bore."
"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."
"Anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you."
"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."
"You have a choice of trusting the natural stability of gold, or the honesty and intelligence of members of government."
"The criminal law is no use to decent people."
"I don't. I look my age; and I am my age. It is the other people who look older than they are. What can you expect from people who eat corpses and drink spirits?"
"When the horrors of anarchy force us to set up laws that forbid us to fight and torture one another for sport, we still snatch at every excuse for declaring individuals outside the protection of law and torturing them to our hearts content."
"Modern poverty is not the poverty that was blest in the Sermon on the Mount."
"Compassion is the fellow-feeling of the unsound."
"Sherlock Holmes was a drug addict without a single amiable trait."
"I am the most spontaneous speaker in the world because every word, every gesture, and every retort has been carefully rehearsed."
"I am justified. For I chose wisdom and the knowledge of good and evil ; and now there is no evil; and wisdom and good are one. It is enough."
"I hate performers who debase great works of art; I long for their annihilation."
"For nearly twenty years I have been a published author... But I have never yet seen a book of mine offered for sale in a shop window."