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| George Bernard Shaw
A drama critic is a man who leaves no turn unstoned. A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing. A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth. A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell. All censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging current concepts and existing institutions. All great truths begin as blasphemies. Altogether too many sheep ....…Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends.As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death. Assassination is the extreme form of censorship. Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world. Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read. Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty; what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness. Do you know what a pessimist is? A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it. Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are more true; they are the only things that are true. England and America are two countries separated by a common language. Englishmen never will be slaves: they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allow them to do. Every man over forty is a scoundrel. Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough. 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. Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort. He is always breaking the law. He broke the law when he was born. His parents were not married. He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career. I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor. I am a Millionaire. That is my religion. I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize. I learned long ago never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it. I often quote myself, it adds spice to my conversation.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 the lesser mind could measure the greater as a footrule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved. If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance. If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance. If you have an apple and I have an apple and we
exchange 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.If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people's opinions will rush in from all quarters. It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid. It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date. Let a short Act of Parliament be passed, placing all street musicians outside the protection of the law, so that any citizen may assail them with stones, sticks, knives, pistols, or bombs without incurring any penalties. 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. Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability. Martyrdom... is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability. My way of joking is to tell the truth. It is the funniest joke in the world. New opinions often appear first as jokes and fancies, then as blasphemies and treason, then as questions open to discussion, and finally as established truths. One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't. Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children. Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. Political necessities sometimes turn out to be political mistakes. Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad. Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. all progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people. Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not. Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time. Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get. The 100% american is 99% idiot. The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity. The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than 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 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 longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time. The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is. 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 man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure is occupation. The ultimate form of censorship is assination. There are only two classes in good society in England: the equestrian class and the neurotic class. There is no love sincerer than the love of food. There is no sincerer love than the love of food." There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it. Think what cowards men would be if they had to bear children. Women are altogether a superior species. Though I can make my extravaganzas appear credible, I cannot make the truth appear so. To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching.We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future. We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners. We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it. We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, and not as they are said to be. What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car? What is life but a seires of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn't come every day. What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn't come every day. What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness. 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 he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity. When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty. When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth. You have no more right to consume happiness without producing it, than to consume wealth without producing it. You see things; and you say Why? But I dream things that never were; and I say Why not? You'll never have a quiet world until you knock the patriotism out of the human race. Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is
forgiven nothing. |
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