George Bernard Shaw

Undershaft: My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.

You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.

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

brave and resolute men, when they are rascals, will not risk their skins for the good of humanity, and, when they are sympathetic enough to care for humanity, abhor murder, and never commit it until their consciences are outraged beyond …

The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier: the manners and habits of a duke would cost a city clerk his situation.

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

I exclude the hypothesis of complete originality on [Charles] Lever's part, because a man can no more be completely original in that sense than a tree can grow out of air.

If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself.

When a heretic wishes to avoid martyrdom he speaks of "Orthodoxy, True and False" and demonstrates that the True is his heresy.

Those who understand evil pardon it.

Do not mistake your objection to defeat for an objection to fighting, your objection to being a slave for an objection to slavery, your objection to not being as rich as your neighbor for an objection to poverty. The cowardly, the …

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

The reformer for whom the world is not good enough finds himself shoulder to shoulder with him that is not good enough for the world.

The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown.

No age or condition is without its heroes. The least incapable general in a nation is its Cæsar, the least imbecile statesman its Solon, the least confused thinker its Socrates, the least commonplace poet its Shakespeare.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience. If we could learn from mere experience, the stones of London would be wiser than its wisest men.

Decency is Indecency's Conspiracy of Silence.

Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

No elaboration of physical or moral accomplishment can atone for the sin of parasitism.

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

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

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

He who desires a lifetime of happiness with a beautiful woman desires to enjoy the taste of wine by keeping his mouth always full of it.