George Bernard Shaw Men Quotations

How can you dare teach a man to read until you've taught him everything else first?

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn't got any.

Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal your own.

It's easier to replace a dead man than a good picture.

Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

A man who has no office to go, to I don't care who he is, is a trial of which you can have no conception.

If I were a woman, I'd simply refuse to speak to any man or do anything for men until I'd got the vote.

Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid of.

Leisure may be defined as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes, labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation.

Old men are dangerous it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.

Some men see things as they are and say, ''Why?'' I of dream things that never were, and say, ''Why not?''

We need men who can dream of things that never were, and ask why not.

Well, dearie, men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability. But you can't blame them for that, can you?

There is not one single established religion that an intelligent, educated man can believe.

I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing phase of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. I have studied him - the wonderful man and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Savior of Humanity.

It is easy - terribly easy - to shake a man's faith in himself. To take advantage of that to break a man's spirit is devil's work.

Man is unique in that he has plans, purpose and goals which require the need for criteria of choice. The need for ethical value is within man whose future may largely be determined by the choice he make

Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

No man manages his affairs as well as a tree does

The more a man possesses over and above what he uses, the more careworn he becomes.

My mother married a very good man ... and she is not at all keen on my doing the same.

A man who loses his money gains, at the least, experience, and sometimes, something better.

Marx's Kapital is not a treatise on socialism; it is a gerrymand against the bourgeoisie. It was supposed to be written for the working class, but the working man respects the bourgeoisie and wants to be a bourgeoisie. Marx never got a hold of him for a moment. It was the revolting sons of the bourgeoisie itself, like myself, that painted the flag red. The middle and upper classes are the revolutionary element in society. The proletariat is the conservative element.

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

I find it easy to forgive the man who invented a devilish instrument like dynamite, but how can one ever forgive the diabolical mind that invented the Nobel Prize in Literature?

I have very carefully studied Islam and the life of its Prophet (PBUH). I have done so both as a student of history and as a critic. And I have come to conclusion that Muhammad (PBUH) was indeed a great man and a deliverer and benefactor of mankind which was till then writhing under the most agonising Pain.

No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.

Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby

The seven deadly sins... food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted.

It is very doubtful whether man is enough of a political animal to produce a good, sensible, serious and efficient constitution. All the evidence is against it.

Men get tired of everything, of heaven no less than of hell; and that all history is nothing but a record of the oscillations of the world between these two extremes. An epoch is but a swing of the pendulum; and each generation thinks the world is progressing because it is always moving.

A man without an address is a vagabond; a man with two addresses is a libertine.

I have studied him - the wonderful man - and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ he must be called the saviour of humanity.

Emotional excitement reaches men through tea, tobacco, opium, whisky, and religion.

[Man] progresses in all things by making a fool of himself.

The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not a man of honor.

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.

The ordinary man is an anarchist. He wants to do as he likes. He may want his neighbour to be governed, but he himself doesn't want to be governed. He is mortally afraid of government officials and policemen.

Keep away from books and from men who get their ideas from books, and your own books will always be fresh.

In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.

If you teach a man anything, he will never learn.

Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.

I don't know if there are men on the moon, but if there are they must be using the earth as their lunatic asylum

There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say I know instead of I am learning, and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity.

A doctor's reputation is made by the number of eminent men who die under his care.

Beware of the man whose God is in the skies.

When a man of normal habits is ill, everyone hastens to assure him that he is going to recover. When a vegetarian is ill (which fortunately very seldom happens), everyone assures him that he is going to die, and that they told him so, and that it serves him right. They implore him to take at least a little gravy, so as to give himself a chance of lasting out the night

Ireland, sir, for good or evil, is like no other place under heaven, and no man can touch its sod or breathe its air without becoming better or worse.

Every man to whom salvation is offered has an inalienable natural right to say 'No, thank you: I prefer to retain my full moral responsibility: it is not good for me to be able to load a scapegoat with my sins: I should be less careful how I committed them if I knew they would cost me nothing.

Jesus remains unshaken as the practical man; and we stand exposed as the fools, the blunderers, the unpractical visionaries.

A man of genius is not a man who sees more than other men do. On the contrary, it is very often found that he is absentminded andobserves much less than other people.... Why is it that the public have such an exaggerated respect for him--after he is dead? The reason is that the man of genius understands the importance of the few things he sees.

The man who has never made a mistake will never make anything else.

It is feeling that sets a man thinking, and not thought that sets him feeling.

We call the one side [of humanity] religion, and we call the other science. Religion is always right. ... Science is always wrong; it is the very artifice of men. Science can never solve one problem without raising ten more problems.

Man's inhumanity to man is only surpassed by his cruelty to animals

Social questions are too sectional, too topical, too temporal to move a man to the mighty effort which is needed to produce greatpoetry. Prison reform may nerve Charles Reade to produce an effective and businesslike prose melodrama; but it could never produce Hamlet, Faust, or Peer Gynt.

The writer who aims at producing the platitudes which are "not for an age, but for all time" has his reward in being unreadable inall ages.... The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only sort of man who writes about all people and about all time.

If a man is indolent, let him be poor. If he is drunken, let him be poor.... Also--somewhat inconsistently--blessed are the poor!

As people get their opinions so largely from the newspapers they read, the corruption of the schools would not matter so much if the Press were free. But the Press is not free. As it costs at least a quarter of a million of money to establish a daily newspaper in London, the newspapers are owned by rich men. And they depend on the advertisements of other rich men. Editors and journalists who express opinions in print that are opposed to the interests of the rich are dismissed and replaced by subservient ones.

Not until he acquires European manners does the American anarchist become the gentleman who assures you that people cannot be mademoral by Act of Parliament (the truth being that it is only by Acts of Parliament that men in large communities can be made moral, even when they want to).

Most married couples spend the whole day apart, the woman in the house, the man in the office or study or workshop.

I must remind you that our credulity is not to be measured by the truth of the things we believe. When men believed that the earthwas flat, they were not credulous: they were using their common sense, and, if asked to prove that the earth was flat, would have said simply, "Look at it." Those who refuse to believe that it is round are exercising a wholesome skepticism.

A conquered nation is like a man with cancer: he can think of nothing else.

Men are always thinking that they are going to do something grandly wicked to their enemies; but when it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones.

It is not true that men can be divided into absolutely honest persons and absolutely dishonest ones. Our honesty varies with the strain put on it.

It's usually pointed out that women are not fit for political power, and ought not to be trusted with a vote because they are politically ignorant, socially prejudiced, narrow-minded, and selfish. True enough, but precisely the same is true of men!

A man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full;so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child again.

Only in the problem play is there any real drama, because drama is no mere setting up of the camera to nature: it is the presentation in parable of the conflict between Man's will and his environment: in a word, of problem.

There is a disease to which plays as well as men become liable with advancing years. In men it is called doting, in plays dating.The more topical the play the more it dates.

The art of manipulating public opinion, which is a necessary art for the democratic politician, and, like other arts, is sometimespractised with greater virtuosity by knaves than by honest men (who are apt to disdain it), has a different technique in different countries. For instance, in England we excel in whitewashing: in America they excel in tarring and feathering. We strain our nerves and stretch our consciences to avoid a scandal: Americans do the same to make one.

But whether the risks to which liberty exposes us are moral or physical our right to liberty involves the right to run them. A man who is not free to risk his neck as an aviator or his soul as a heretic is not free at all; and the right to liberty begins, not at the age of 21 years but 21 seconds.

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.

As people get their opinions so largely from the newspapers they read... But the Press is not free, the newspapers are owned by rich men.

Every man deserves to be judged in the context of his times.

I object to publishers: the one service they have done me is to teach me to do without them. They combine commercial rascality with artistic touchiness and pettishness, without being either good business men or fine judges of literature.

Taking all the round of professions and occupations, you will find that every man is the worse for being poor; and the doctor is a specially dangerous man when poor.

A married man is a man with a past, while a bachelor is a man with a future.

The thief who is in prison is not necessarily more dishonest than his fellows at large, but mostly one who, through ignorance or stupidity [or racism or poverty! - Draffan] steals in a way that is not customary. He snatches a loaf from the baker's counter and is promptly run into gaol. Another man snatches bread from the table of hundreds of widows and orphans and similar credulous souls who do not know the ways of company promoters; and, as likely as not, he is run into Parliament.

Women are called womanly only when they regard themselves as existing solely for the use of men.

When men die of disease they are said to die from natural causes. When they recover (and mostly they do) the doctor gets the credit of curing them.