"Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve."

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More quotes from: George Bernard Shaw

• "A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he ..."
• "A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic. "
• "A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence ..."
• "A genius can't be forced; nor can you make an ape an alderman. "
• "A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of ..."
• "A happy family is but an earlier heaven. "
• "A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a ..."
• "A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a ..."
• "A man never tells you anything until you contradict him. "
• "A man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without ..."
• "A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows. "
• "A Native American Elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of ..."
• "A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell. "
• "Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life. "
• "All censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All ..."
• "All great truths begin as blasphemies. "
• "All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have ..."
• "Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend - ..."
• "Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about ..."
• "An asylum for the sane would be empty in America. "
• "An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; ..."
• "An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable. "
• "An index is a great leveller. "
• "Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends. "
• "Assassination is the extreme form of censorship. "
• "Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended. "
• "Beauty is a short-lived tyranny. "
• "Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when ..."
• "Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see ..."
• "Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance. "
• "Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor ..."
• "Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed ..."
• "Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the ..."
• "Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal ..."
• "Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men ..."
• "Crude classifications and false generalizations are the curse of organized life. "
• "Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn't ..."
• "Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire. "
• "Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment ..."
• "Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. "
• "Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes ..."
• "Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed. "
• "Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor ..."
• "England and America are two countries separated by the same language. "
• "Every man over forty is a scoundrel. "
• "Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it. "
• "Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough. "
• "Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his ..."
• "Fashions are the only induced epidemics, proving that epidemics can be induced by tradesmen. "
• "Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics. "
• "Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious. "
• "Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an ..."
• "Find enough clever things to say, and you're a Prime Minister; write them down and ..."
• "First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity. "
• "Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of ..."
• "General consultant to mankind. "
• "Give a man health and a course to steer, and he'll never stop to trouble ..."
• "Go anywhere in England where there are natural wholesome, contented and really nice English people; ..."
• "Go on writing plays, my boy, One of these days one of these London producers ..."
• "Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated. "
• "He didn't dare to, because his father had a weak heart and habitually threatened to ..."
• "He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career. "
• "He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches. "
• "He's a man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man ..."
• "Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never ..."
• "Hell is full of musical amateurs. "
• "Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained ..."
• "Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a ..."
• "How can what an Englishman believes be hearsay? It is a contradiction in terms. "
• "I absolutely forbid any such outrage. "
• "I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as ..."
• "I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad. "
• "I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the ..."
• "I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like ..."
• "I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while. "
• "I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, ..."

• "I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me ..."
• "I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he ..."
• "I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation. "
• "I want to be all used up when I die. "
• "I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work ..."
• "I'm an atheist and I thank God for it. "
• "I'm only a beer teetotaller, not a champagne teetotaller. "
• "If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion. "
• "If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of ..."
• "If parents would only realize how they bore their children! "
• "If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it ..."
• "If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it ..."
• "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples ..."
• "If you injure your neighbour, better not do it by halves. "
• "If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself ..."
• "If you strike a child take care that you strike it in anger, even at ..."
• "Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you ..."
• "In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood ..."
• "In heaven an angel is nobody in particular. "
• "In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it. "
• "Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of ..."
• "It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers ..."
• "It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid. "
• "It is fortunate to come of distinguished ancestry. - It is not less so to ..."
• "It is most unwise for people in love to marry. "
• "It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics. "
• "It was from Handel that I learned that style consists in force of assertion. "
• "It's so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right. "
• "Lack of money is the root of all evil. "
• "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. "
• "Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart's desire; the other ..."
• "Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases ..."
• "Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. "
• "Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent. "
• "Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else. "
• "Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long. "
• "Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save ..."
• "Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window ..."
• "Martyrdom: The only way a man can become famous without ability. "
• "Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience. "
• "Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability. "
• "Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life ..."
• "Most people do not pray; they only beg. "
• "My reputation grows with every failure. "
• "Never fret for an only son, the idea of failure will never occur to him. "
• "Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us ..."
• "New opinions often appear first as jokes and fancies, then as blasphemies and treason, then ..."
• "No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely ..."
• "No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced ..."
• "No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very ..."
• "No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious. "
• "Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another ..."
• "Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious. "
• "Oh, the tiger will love you. There is no sincerer love than the love of ..."
• "Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love. "
• "Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever ..."
• "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you ..."
• "Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous. "
• "People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. ..."
• "People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them. "
• "People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it. "
• "Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and ..."
• "Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes. "
• "Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, ..."
• "Property is organized robbery. "
• "Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad. "
• "Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to ..."
• "Science never solves a problem without creating ten more. "
• "Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing. "
• "She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech. "
• "Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn. "
• "Socialism is the same as Communism, only better English. "
• "Some look at things that are, and ask why. I dream of things that never ..."
• "Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive. "
• "Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one ..."

• "Syllables govern the world. "
• "Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what ..."
• "The art of government is the organisation of idolatry. "
• "The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him ..."
• "The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office. "
• "The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the ..."
• "The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier. "
• "The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of ..."
• "The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship. "
• "The golden rule is that there are no golden rules. "
• "The great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life. "
• "The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that ..."
• "The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, ..."
• "The love of economy is the root of all virtue. "
• "The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who ..."
• "The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man ..."
• "The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong. "
• "The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, ..."
• "The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six ..."
• "The only secrets are the secrets that keep themselves. "
• "The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by ..."
• "The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder ..."
• "The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and ..."
• "The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post. "
• "The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react. "
• "The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got ..."
• "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to ..."
• "The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are ..."
• "The seven deadly sins... food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes,respectability and children. Nothing can lift those ..."
• "The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel. "
• "The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business. "
• "The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the ..."
• "The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge ..."
• "The true joy of life is being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as ..."
• "The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one ..."
• "The utmost I can bear for myself in my best days is that I was ..."
• "The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be ..."
• "There are only two classes in good society in England: the equestrian classes and the ..."
• "There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other ..."
• "There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it. "
• "There is no sincerer love than the love of food. "
• "There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it. "
• "Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it ..."
• "Very few people can afford to be poor. "
• "Virtue is insufficient temptation. "
• "Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at ..."
• "We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth. "
• "We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility ..."
• "We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. "
• "We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth ..."
• "We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience. "
• "We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, ..."
• "What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to ..."
• "What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married? "
• "What we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution ..."
• "What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge ..."
• "When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn't got any. "
• "When a man wants to murder a tiger, he calls it sport; when the tiger ..."
• "When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that ..."
• "When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were ..."
• "When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points ..."
• "When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, ..."
• "Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The ..."
• "Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about ..."
• "Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the ..."
• "Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable. "
• "You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward ..."
• "You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge ..."
• "You cannot be a hero without being a coward. "
• "You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and ..."
• "You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human ..."
• "Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children. "
• "Youth is wasted on the young. "