The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (398 page)

Shaw, George Bernard
1856–1950

1
All great truths begin as blasphemies.

Annajanska
(1919)

2
Oh, you are a very poor soldier—a chocolate cream soldier!

Arms and the Man
(1898) act 1

3
I'm only a beer teetotaller, not a champagne teetotaller.

Candida
(1898) act 3

4
The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.

The Devil's Disciple
(1901) act 3

5
Stimulate the phagocytes.

The Doctor's Dilemma
(1911) act 1

6
All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

The Doctor's Dilemma
(1911) act 1

7
The one point on which all women are in furious secret rebellion against the existing law is the saddling of the right to a child with the obligation to become the servant of a man.

Getting Married
(1911) preface "The Right to Motherhood"

8
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.

The Irrational Knot
(1905) ch. 18

9
John Bull's other island.

title of play (1907)

10
There are only two qualities in the world: efficiency and inefficiency, and only two sorts of people: the efficient and the inefficient.

John Bull's Other Island
(1907) act 4

11
The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.

Major Barbara
(1907) preface

12
I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.

Major Barbara
(1907) act 2

13
I can't talk religion to a man with bodily hunger in his eyes.

Major Barbara
(1907) act 2

14
Alcohol is a very necessary article…It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.

Major Barbara
(1907) act 2

15
He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

Major Barbara
(1907) act 3

16
Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

Major Barbara
(1907) act 3

17
But a lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.

Man and Superman
(1903) act 1

18
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.

Man and Superman
(1903) act 1

19
Of all human struggles there is none so treacherous and remorseless as the struggle between the artist man and the mother woman.

Man and Superman
(1903) act 1

20
You think that you are Ann's suitor; that you are the pursuer and she the pursued…Fool: it is you who are the pursued, the marked down quarry, the destined prey.

Man and Superman
(1903) act 2

21
Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.

Man and Superman
(1903) act 3

22
Englishmen never will be slaves: they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allow them to do.

Man and Superman
(1903) act 3

23
When the military man approaches, the world locks up its spoons and packs off its womankind.

Man and Superman
(1903) act 3.

24
What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?

Man and Superman
(1903) act 3

25
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

Man and Superman
(1903) "Maxims: Liberty and Equality"

26
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

Man and Superman
(1903) "Maxims: Education"

27
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.

Man and Superman
(1903) "Maxims: Marriage"

28
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.

Man and Superman
(1903) "Maxims: How to Beat Children"

29
Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.

Man and Superman
(1903) "Maxims: Stray Sayings"

30
Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

Man and Superman
(1903) "Maxims: Stray Sayings"

31
Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

Man and Superman
(1903) "Maxims: Stray Sayings"

32
You will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He…supports his king on loyal principles and cuts off his king's head on republican principles.

The Man of Destiny
(1898)

33
Anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you.

Misalliance
(1914)

34
A great devotee of the Gospel of Getting On.

Mrs Warren's Profession
(1898) act 4

35
You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

O'Flaherty V.C.
(1919)

36
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

Parents and Children
(1914) "Children's Happiness"

37
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant
(1898) vol. 2, preface

38
It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.

Pygmalion
(1916) preface

39
I don't want to talk grammar, I want to talk like a lady.

Pygmalion
(1916) act 2

40
Gin was mother's milk to her.

Pygmalion
(1916) act 3

41
Walk! Not bloody likely.

Pygmalion
(1916) act 3

42
No Englishman is ever fairly beaten.

Saint Joan
(1924) sc. 4

43
Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?

Saint Joan
(1924) epilogue

44
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

The Showing-Up of Blanco Posnet
(1911) "Limits to Toleration"

45
The younger generation is knocking at the door, and as I open it there steps spritely in the incomparable Max.
on handing over the theatre review column to Max Beerbohm

in
Saturday Review
21 May 1898 "Valedictory"

46
The photographer is like the cod which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity.

introduction to the catalogue for Alvin Langdon Coburn's exhibition at the Royal Photographic Society, 1906

47
The trouble, Mr Goldwyn, is that you are only interested in art and I am only interested in money.
telegraphed version of the outcome of a conversation between Shaw and Sam Goldwyn

Alva Johnson
The Great Goldwyn
(1937) ch. 3

48
[Dancing is] a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

in
New Statesman
23 March 1962

49
England and America are two countries divided by a common language.

attributed in this and other forms to George Bernard Shaw, but not found in Shaw's published writings.

 
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Shawcross, Hartley
1902–

1
"But," said Alice, "the question is whether you can make a word mean different things." "Not so," said Humpty-Dumpty, "the question is which is to be the master. That's all." We are the masters at the moment, and not only at the moment, but for a very long time to come.
often quoted as, "We are the masters now"

speech in the House of Commons, 2 April 1946.

 
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