George Bernard Shaw

People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough.

Very few people can afford to be poor.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich, something for nothing.

The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for expenses and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

You know you’re a success when you look at your kids and realize they turned out better than you.

Be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them.

Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual; you have an obligation to be one. You cannot make any useful contribution in life unless you do this.

Our best history is still poetry.

When I look back on all the worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.

The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First to lay asleep opposition and to surprise. For where a man’s intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against them. The second is to reserve a man’s self a fair retreat: for if a man engage himself, by a manifest declaration, he must go through, or take a fall. The third is, the better to discover the mind of another. For to him that opens himself, men will hardly show themselves adverse; but will fair let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom of thought.

Sweet and glorious it is to die for our country.

Most people think that aging is irreversible and we know that there are mechanisms even in the human machinery that allow for the reversal of aging, through correction of diet, through anti-oxidants, through removal of toxins from the body, through exercise, through yoga and breathing techniques, and through meditation.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Friends are thieves of time.