Tao Te Ching
George Bernard Shaw
1856 – 1950 CE
UK playwright second only to Shakespeare
Playwright second only to Shakespeare, political activist, provocative idea generator, theatre and music critic; Shaw wrote over 60 plays, won a Nobel Prize in Literature, and an Academy Award. He promoted, popularized, and evolved the ideas of luminaries like Nietzsche, Samuel Butler, Marx, Shelley, Blake, and Dickens while using his plays to advocate for political and religious ideals as well as many controversial topics like promoting eugenics, opposing organized religion and vaccinations, criticizing both sides during World War I, and expressing esteem for dictators like Mussolini and Stalin. An insatiable originator, he frequently and intentionally proposed contradictory views, controversial political stands, and declined all public honors. He worked hard encouraging people to think for themselvesEras
Western
Post-Romantic Age (1850 – 2018 CE)Gilded Age (1860 – 1900 CE)
Great Depression (1929 – 1941 CE)
Victorian (1837 – 1901 CE)
Roaring Twenties (1920 – 1929 CE)
Chinese
Qing dynasty (1644 – 1912 CE)Unlisted Sources
80th Birthday speech
A Manifesto
Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God, 1932
Androcles and the Lion, 1912
Annajanska
Back to Methuselah (1921)
Daily Telegraph
Everbody's Political What's What?
Getting Married, 1908
Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism
John Bull's Other Island, 1906
Major Barbara, 1907
Man and Superman (1903)
Maxims for Revolutionists
New Republic, 1937
New York Times, 85th birthday interview, 1941
Preface, Major Barbara (1907)
Remarks, 1930
Saint Joan, 1923
The Sanity of Art
Quotes by George Bernard Shaw (55 quotes)
“Honest education is dangerous to tyranny and privilege: systems like the capitalist one use both ignorance and education as underpinnings for general faith in themselves as rulers.”
from Everbody's Political What's What?
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“Socialism is not charity nor loving kindness, nor sympathy with the poor, nor popular philanthropy... only the economist's hatred of waste and disorder, the lawyer's hatred of injustice, the doctor's hatred of disease, the saint's hatred of the seven deadly sins.”
from Everbody's Political What's What?
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“When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.”
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“The most striking result of our present system of farming out the national Land and capital to private individuals has been the division of society into hostile classes, with large appetites and no dinners at one extreme, and large dinners and no appetites at the other.”
from A Manifesto
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“The apparent multiplication of gods is bewildering at the first glance, but you soon discover that they are the same GOD. There is always one uttermost God who defies personification. This makes Hinduism the most tolerant religion in the world, because its one transcendent God includes all possible gods. In fact Hinduism is so elastic and so subtle that the most profound Methodist, and crudest idolater, are equally at home with it.”
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“[anti-Semitism is] the hatred of the lazy, ignorant fat-headed Gentile for the pertinacious Jew who, schooled by adversity to use his brains to the utmost, outdoes him in business.”
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“Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.”
from Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism
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“Instead of sympathizing with the poor and abolishing the rich, we must ruthlessly abolish the poor by raising their standard of life... Lack of money is the root of all evil... What is the matter with the poor is Poverty: what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.”
from Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism
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“The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization... the most important thing in our world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty as conspicuously as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness and ugliness.”
from Major Barbara, 1907
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“The irresistible natural truth which we all abhor and repudiate: the greatest of our evils and the worst of our crimes is poverty, and that our first duty is not to be poor.”
from Major Barbara, 1907
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“[Jesus] has not been a failure yet; for nobody has ever been sane enough to try his way... the specific doctrine of Jesus has not in all this time been put into political or general social practice.”
from Androcles and the Lion, 1912
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“It is not disbelief that is dangerous in our society: it is belief.”
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“Christ is not the lifeless harmless image he has hitherto been to you, but a rallying center for revolutionary influence which all established States and Churches fight”
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“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
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“We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
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“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
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“I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”
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“There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.”
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“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
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“Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.”
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“Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.”
from Major Barbara, 1907
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“Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.”
from Major Barbara, 1907
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“Democracy substitutes selection by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.”
from Maxims for Revolutionists
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“The golden rule is that there is no golden rule.”
from Maxims for Revolutionists
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“The art of government is the organization of idolatry.”
from Maxims for Revolutionists
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“The man who listens to Reason is lost: Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her.”
from Maxims for Revolutionists
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“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”
from Maxims for Revolutionists
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“All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions... every step of progress means a duty repudiated and a scripture torn up. And every reformer is denounced accordingly.”
from Daily Telegraph
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“Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.”
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“There is only one sort of genuine Socialism, the democratic sort, by which I mean the organization of society for the benefit of the whole people.”
from New York Times, 85th birthday interview, 1941
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“It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to corrupt the youthful mind, and, generally to scandalize one's uncles.”
from The Sanity of Art
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“There is no antithesis between authoritarian government and democracy. All government is authoritarian; and the more democratic a government, the more authoritarian because with the people behind it, it can push its authority further than any Tsar or foreign despot dare do.”
from New Republic, 1937
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“Karl Marx made a man of me. Socialism made a man of me. Otherwise I should be like so many of my literary colleagues...”
from 80th Birthday speech
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“A man who calls himself 100% American and is proud of it, is generally 150% an idiot politically... I myself have been particularly careful never to say a civil word about America.”
from Remarks, 1930
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“Military service produces moral imbecility.”
from John Bull's Other Island, 1906
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“When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that exalted, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until dealt do they part... Make divorce as easy, as cheap, and as private as marriage.”
from Getting Married, 1908
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“Why not give Christianity a trial? No sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus. The followers of Paul and Peter made Christendom, whilst the Nazarenes were wiped out.”
from Androcles and the Lion, 1912
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“Jesus was talking the most most penetrating good sense when he preached Communism; when he declared that the reality behind the popular belief in God was a creative spirit in ourselves called by him the Heavenly Father and by us Evolution, Life Force, and other names.”
from Androcles and the Lion, 1912
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“The best place to seek God is in a garden—dig for him there.”
from Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God, 1932
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“Crime is only the retail department of what in wholesale, we call penal law.”
from Maxims for Revolutionists
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“The exemption of women from military service is founded not on any natural inaptitude that men do not share, but on the fact that communities cannot reproduce themselves without plenty of women. Men are more largely dispensable, and are sacrificed accordingly.”
from Saint Joan, 1923
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“Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it....”
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“To be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer.”
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“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”
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“England and America are two countries separated by the same language!”
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“Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.”
from Man and Superman (1903)
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“What you call crime is nothing; a murder here and a theft there... what do they matter? They are only the accidents and illnesses of life; there are not 50 genuine professional criminals in London. But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill-fed, ill-clothed people.”
from Preface, Major Barbara (1907)
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“Churches are suffered to exist only on condition that they preach submission to the State as at present capitalistically organized.”
from Preface, Major Barbara (1907)
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“I am persuaded that the future historian of America will find your works as indispensable to him as a French historian finds the political tracts of Voltaire.”
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“Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.”
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“Justice is impartiality. Only strangers are impartial.”
from Back to Methuselah (1921)
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“Hared is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.”
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Quotes about George Bernard Shaw (2 quotes)
“Writers who have had an easy start in life are usually second rate -- or at least, not quite first-rate. Dickens, Balzac, Dostoevsky, Shaw, H. G. Wells, are examples of the first-rate kind; in the twentieth century, John Galsworthy, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, and Samuel Beckett are examples of the second kind. They are far from being mediocre writers; yet they tend to be tinged with a certain pessimism that arises from never having achieved a certain resistance against problems.”
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“He was no originator of ideas. He was an insatiable adopter and adapter, an incomparable prestidigitator with the thoughts of the forerunners… By bending to their service all the faculties of a powerful mind, by inextinguishable wit, and by every artifice of argument, he carried their thoughts as far as they would reach—so far beyond their sources that they came to us with the vitality of the newly created.”
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