Humorous Quotes attributed to G. B. Shaw

1856-1950, Irish Dramatist

· A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. 
· A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. 
· A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth. 
· A doctor’s reputation is made by the number of eminent men who die under his care. 
· Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life. 
· All great truths begin as blasphemies. 
· Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended. 
· Dancing: The vertical expression of a horizontal desire legalized by music. 
· Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same. 
· Do not try to live for ever. You will not succeed. 
· Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for 
        myself by thinking once or twice a week. 
· I was always unlawful; I broke the law when I was born because my parents weren't married. 
· I often quote myself, it adds spice to my conversation. 
· If all the economists in the world were laid end to end, they wouldn’t reach any conclusion. 
· It is a woman’s business to get married as soon as possible, and a man’s to keep unmarried as long as he 
        can. 
· Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people 
        laugh. 
· Martyrdom: The only way a man can become famous without ability. 
· My reputation grows with every failure. 
· One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't. 
· Only Lawyers and mental defectives are automatically exempt for jury duty. 
· Take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then say it with the utmost levity. 
· The golden rule is that there are no golden rules. 
· The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post. 
· The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the 
        essence of inhumanity. 
· 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. (Man and Superman) 
· The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. 
· The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech. 
· There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it. 
· Those who can do, those who can't teach. 
· To be clever enough to get a great deal of money, one must be stupid enough to want it. 
· We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience. 
· We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence...on pain of 
        liquidation. 
· We don't stop playing because we grow old; We grow old because we stop playing ! 
· What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattery. 
· When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty. 
· When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it 
        ferocity. 
· When a man teaches something he does not know to somebody else who has no aptitude for it, and     
        gives him a certificate of proficiency, the latter has completed the education of a gentleman. 
· Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of 
        course. 
· You see things; and you say `Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say `Why not? 
· Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children. 
· A day’s work is a day’s work, neither more nor less, and the man who does it needs a day’s sustenance, 
        a night’s repose and due leisure, whether he be painter or ploughman. 
· A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic. 
· A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence 
        University education. 
· A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing 
        nothing. 
· A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth. 
· Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them. 
· An American has no sense of privacy. He does not know what it means.There is no such thing in the 
        country. 
· Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men. 
· Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. 
· England and America are two countries separated by a common language. 
· Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough. 
· Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for 
        myself by thinking once or twice a week. 
· Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich–something for nothing. 
· Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from 
        history. 
· Hell is full of musical amateurs. 
· I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have 
        invented the Nobel Prize. 
· I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation. 
· If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion. 
· If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning 
        from experience. 
· If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a footrule can measure a pyramid, there would be 
        finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved. 
· If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance. 
· Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at 
        last you create what you will. 
· Lack of money is the root of all evil. 
· Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people 
        laugh. 
· Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability. 
· Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born 
        in it. 
· Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad. 
· Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing. 
· The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken 
         man is happier than a sober one. 
· The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed but that he cannot believe anyone else.