George Bernard Shaw

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

Discern of the coming on of years, and think not to do the same things still; for age will not be defied.

Merry Christmas! the man threatened.

You and I are essentially infinite choice-makers. In every moment of our existence, we are in that field of all possibilities where we have access to an infinity of choices.

That which builds is better than that which is built.

A good and faithful judge ever prefers the honorable to the expedient.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

In fine, he that is drunk is not a Man: Because he is so long void of Reason, that distinguishes a Man from a Beast.

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.

To see helpless infancy stretching out her hands, and pouring out her cries in testimony of dependence, without any powers to alarm jealousy, or any guilt to alienate affection, must surely awaken tenderness in every human mind; and tenderness once excited will be hourly increased by the natural contagion of felicity, by the repercussion of communicated pleasure, by the consciousness of dignity of benefaction.

Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rule of composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation; rather prevents loss than procures advantage; and often miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honor.

I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him some time or other.

Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world – and never will.