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George Bernard Shaw Quotes - Page 49

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The open mind never acts: when we have done our utmost to arrive at a reasonable conclusion, we still must close our minds for the moment with a snap, and act dogmatically on our conclusions.

The open mind never acts: when we have done our utmost to arrive at a reasonable conclusion, we still must close our minds for the moment with a snap, and act dogmatically on our conclusions.

George Bernard Shaw
Thinking, Mind, Done
George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.3244, e-artnow

What is any respectable girl brought up to do but to catch some rich man's fancy and get the benefit of his money by marrying him?--as if a marriage ceremony could make any difference in the right or wrong of the thing!

George Bernard Shaw
Marriage, Girl, Sex
George Bernard Shaw (2010). “Mrs. Warren's Profession”, p.30, Cosimo, Inc.

Even under the most perfect Social Democracy we should, without Communism, still be living like hogs, except that each hog would get his fair share of grub.... Whilst we are hogs, let us at least be well-fed, healthy, reciprocally useful hogs, instead of--well, instead of the sort we are at present.

George Bernard Shaw
Perfect, Healthy, Democracy

No child should be brought up to suppose that its food and clothes come down from heaven or are miraculously conjured from empty space by papa. Loathsome as we have made the idea of duty (like the idea of work) we must habituate children to a sense of repayable obligation to the community for what they consume and enjoy, and inculcate the repayment as a point of honor.

George Bernard Shaw
Children, Ideas, Clothes
George Bernard Shaw (2015). “George Bernard Shaw: The Collected Plays (Illustrated): 60 plays including Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, The Apple Cart, Cymbeline, Androcles And The Lion, The Man Of Destiny, The Inca Of Perusalem and Macbeth Skit”, p.1987, e-artnow

Even to this day it is easier than it ought to be for me to get a rise out of an American by telling him something about himself which is equally true about every human being on the face of the globe. He at once resents this as a disparagement and an assertion on my part that people in other parts of the globe are not like that, and are loftily superior to such weaknesses.

George Bernard Shaw
People, Weakness, Faces

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).

George Bernard Shaw
Men, Law, People

Unless the law of marriage were first made human, it could never become divine.

George Bernard Shaw
Marriage, Law, Firsts
George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Plays of George Bernard Shaw (Illustrated): Including Renowned Titles like Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, The Inca Of Perusalem, Macbeth Skit, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion”, p.1771, e-artnow

When I speak of The Case for Equality I mean human equality; and that, of course, can only mean one thing: it means equality of income.

George Bernard Shaw
Mean, Equality, Income

Unless comedy touches me as well as amuses me, it leaves me with a sense of having wasted my evening. I go to the theatre to be moved to laughter, not to be tickled or bustled into it.

George Bernard Shaw
Laughter, Theatre, Evening
George Bernard Shaw (1977). “The Portable Bernard Shaw”, Viking Adult

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.

George Bernard Shaw
Men, Thinking, Enemy
George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.1662, e-artnow

It is doubtless wise, when a reform is introduced, to try to persuade the British public that it is not a reform at all; but appearances must be kept up to some extent at least.

George Bernard Shaw
Wise, Trying, Reform

Blasphemy and sedition (meaning the truth about Church and State).

George Bernard Shaw
Church, States, Church And State
George Bernard Shaw (2010). “Back to Methuselah”, p.12, The Floating Press

O Lord! I don't know which is the worst of the country, the walking or the sitting at home with nothing to do.

George Bernard Shaw
Country, Home, Sitting
George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Plays of George Bernard Shaw (Illustrated): Including Renowned Titles like Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, The Inca Of Perusalem, Macbeth Skit, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion”, p.295, e-artnow

You're only a beginner; and what you think is love, and interest, and all that, is not real love at all: three quarters of it is only unsatisfied curiosity.

George Bernard Shaw
Real, Thinking, Curiosity

If we have come to think that the nursery and the kitchen are the natural sphere of a woman, we have done so exactly as English children come to think that a cage is the natural sphere of a parrot: because they have never seen one anywhere else.

George Bernard Shaw
Children, Thinking, Kitchen
George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.4210, e-artnow

A third variety of drama ... begins as tragedy with scraps of fun in it ... and ends in comedy without mirth in it, the place of mirth being taken by a more or less bitter and critical irony.

George Bernard Shaw
Fun, Drama, Taken

I must ... warn my readers that my attacks are directed against themselves, not against my stage figures.

George Bernard Shaw
Warning, Figures, Stage

I do not waste my time writing pot-boilers: the pot must be boiled, and even my pot au feu has some chunks of fresh meat in it. ...I have no time to boil myself down; and anyhow I could not do so and preserve all the necessary nutriment and the flavoring on which the digestibility depends.

George Bernard Shaw
Writing, Meat, Soup

If associations to control burglary and murder were tolerated we should take it for granted that the members should all be burglers and murderers.

George Bernard Shaw
Association, Murder, Granted

I am highly susceptible to the force of all truly religious music, especially to the music of my own church, the church of Shelley, Michelangelo, and Beethoven.

George Bernard Shaw
Religious, Church, Force

The fact is that the intrinsic worth of the book, play or whatever the author is trying to sell is the least, last factor in the the whole transaction.

George Bernard Shaw
Book, Play, Trying

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.

George Bernard Shaw
Men, Judging, Done

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.

George Bernard Shaw
Men, Doctors, Occupation

You know, Tolstoy, like myself, wasn't taken in by superstitions like science and medicine.

George Bernard Shaw
Taken, Medicine, Superstitions

I must have been an insufferable child; all children are.

George Bernard Shaw
Children, Insufferable, Has Beens

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