Bernard Shaw

“ Those who understand the steam engine and the electric telegraph spend their lives in trying to replace them with something better.
The imagination cannot conceive a viler criminal than he who should build another London like the present one, nor a greater benefactor than he who should destroy it. ”

“ SELF-SACRIFICE Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.
If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself. ”

“ Any marriage system which condemns a majority of the population to celibacy will be violently wrecked on the pretext that it outrages morality.
Polygamy, when tried under modern democratic conditions, as by the Mormons, is wrecked by the revolt of the mass of inferior men who are condemned to celibacy by it; for the maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first rate man to the exclusive possession of a third rate one. ”

“ LIBERTY AND EQUALITY He who confuses political liberty with freedom and political equality with similarity has never thought for five minutes about either.
Nothing can be unconditional: consequently nothing can be free. ”

“ The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
It is not necessary to replace a guillotined criminal: it is necessary to replace a guillotined social system.
TITLES Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced by the inferior.
Great men refuse titles because they are jealous of them.
HONOR There are no perfectly honorable men; but every true man has one main point of honor and a few minor ones.
You cannot believe in honor until you have achieved it. Better keep yourself clean and bright: you are the window through which you must see the world. ”

“ The man who has graduated from the flogging block at Eton to the bench from which he sentences the garotter to be flogged is the same social product as the garotter who has been kicked by his father and cuffed by his mother until he has grown strong enough to throttle and rob the rich citizen whose money he desires. ”

“ Every fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his credulity science or morality as confidently as his father called it divine revelation.
No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another. ”

“ Crime is only the retail department of what, in wholesale, we call penal law.
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport: when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity. The distinction between Crime and Justice is no greater. ”

“ MARRIAGE Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
Marriage is the only legal contract which abrogates as between the parties all the laws that safeguard the particular relation to which it refers. ”

“ The reformer for whom the world is not good enough finds himself shoulder to shoulder with him that is not good enough for the world.
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing. ”

“ A modern gentleman is necessarily the enemy of his country. Even in war he does not fight to defend it, but to prevent his power of preying on it from passing to a foreigner. Such combatants are patriots in the same sense as two dogs fighting for a bone are lovers of animals.
The North American Indian was a type of the sportsman warrior gentleman. The Periclean Athenian was a type of the intellectually and artistically cultivated gentleman. Both were political failures. The modern gentleman, without the hardihood of the one or the culture of the other, has the appetite of both put together. ”

“ If the wicked flourish and the fittest survive, Nature must be the God of rascals.
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience!
Compassion is the fellow-feeling of the unsound. ”

“ The difference between the shallowest routineer and the deepest thinker appears, to the latter, trifling; to the former, infinite.
In a stupid nation the man of genius becomes a god: everybody worships him and nobody does his will. ”

“ The tyranny that forbids you to make the road with pick and shovel is worse than that which prevents you from lolling along it in a carriage and pair.
In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness. ”

“ A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the parent's first duty. ”

“ IDOLATRY The art of government is the organization of idolatry.
The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters.
The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols. ”

“ The notion that the colonel need be a better man than the private is as confused as the notion that the keystone need be stronger than the coping stone.
Where equality is undisputed, so also is subordination.
Equality is fundamental in every department of social organization.
The relation of superior to inferior excludes good manners.
EDUCATION When a man teaches something he does not know to somebody else who has no aptitude for it, and gives him a certificate of proficiency, the latter has completed the education of a gentleman. ”

“ 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.
The most intolerable pain is produced by prolonging the keenest pleasure. ”

“ No age or condition is without its heroes. The least incapable general in a nation is its Cæsar, the least imbecile statesman its Solon, the least confused thinker its Socrates, the least commonplace poet its Shakespear. ”

“ In moments of progress the noble succeed, because things are going their way: in moments of decadence the base succeed for the same reason: hence the world is never without the exhilaration of contemporary success. ”

“ He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
A learned man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge: it is more dangerous than ignorance.
Activity is the only road to knowledge. ”

“ The man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.
The more a man possesses over and above what he uses, the more careworn he becomes. ”

“ A limited monarchy is a device for combining the inertia of a wooden idol with the credibility of a flesh and blood one.
When the wooden idol does not answer the peasant's prayer, he beats it: when the flesh and blood idol does not satisfy the civilized man, he cuts its head off. ”

“ CIVILIZATION Civilization is a disease produced by the practice of building societies with rotten material.
Those who admire modern civilization usually identify it with the steam engine and the electric telegraph. ”

“ Assassination on the scaffold is the worst form of assassination, because there it is invested with the approval of society.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind. ”

“ When a heretic wishes to avoid martyrdom he speaks of "Orthodoxy, True and False" and demonstrates that the True is his heresy.
Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself. ”

“ The accidental function of marriage is the gratification of the amoristic sentiment of mankind.
The artificial sterilization of marriage makes it possible for marriage to fulfill its accidental function whilst neglecting its essential one. ”

“ The perfect servant, when his master makes humane advances to him, feels that his existence is threatened, and hastens to change his place.
Masters and servants are both tyrannical; but the masters are the more dependent of the two.
A man enjoys what he uses, not what his servants use. ”

“ Gambling promises the poor what Property performs for the rich: that is why the bishops dare not denounce it fundamentally.
THE SOCIAL QUESTION 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. ”

“ What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.
VIRTUES AND VICES No specific virtue or vice in a man implies the existence of any other specific virtue or vice in him, however closely the imagination may associate them. ”

“ GAMBLING The most popular method of distributing wealth is the method of the roulette table.
The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown. ”

“ Acquired notions of propriety are stronger than natural instincts. It is easier to recruit for monasteries and convents than to induce an Arab woman to uncover her mouth in public, or a British officer to walk through Bond Street in a golfing cap on an afternoon in May. ”

“ He who slays a king and he who dies for him are alike idolaters.
ROYALTY Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination. When the process is interrupted by adversity at a critical age, as in the case of Charles II, the subject becomes sane and never completely recovers his kingliness. ”

“ He who believes in education, criminal law, and sport, needs only property to make him a perfect modern gentleman.
MODERATION Moderation is never applauded for its own sake.
A moderately honest man with a moderately faithful wife, moderate drinkers both, in a moderately healthy house: that is the true middle class unit.
THE UNCONSCIOUS SELF The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it. ”

“ At the University every great treatise is postponed until its author attains impartial judgment and perfect knowledge. If a horse could wait as long for its shoes and would pay for them in advance, our blacksmiths would all be college dons. ”

“ No foxhunter is such a cad as to pretend that he hunts the fox to teach it not to steal chickens, or that he suffers more acutely than the fox at the death. Remember that even in childbeating there is the sportsman's way and the cad's way. ”

“ All men mean well.
NATURAL RIGHTS The Master of Arts, by proving that no man has any natural rights, compels himself to take his own for granted.
The right to live is abused whenever it is not constantly challenged. ”

“ In a slave state, the slaves rule: in Mayfair, the tradesman rules.
HOW TO BEAT CHILDREN If you strike a child, take care that you strike it in anger, even at the risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neither can nor should be forgiven. ”

“ The Chinese tame fowls by clipping their wings, and women by deforming their feet. A petticoat round the ankles serves equally well.
Political Economy and Social Economy are amusing intellectual games ”