Misattributed Bernard Shaw Quotes

War does not determine who is right - only who is left. ~ Anonymous

A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes. ~ George Bernard Shaw

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. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Remember that I too am mortal. ~ George Bernard Shaw

To withhold deserved praise lest it should make its object conceited is as dishonest as to withhold payment of a just debt lest your creditor should spend the money badly. ~ George Bernard Shaw

An actress is not a lady; at least, when she is, she is not an actress. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Walpole has no intellect. A mere surgeon. A wonderful operator but, after all, what is operating? ... Manual labour. ~ George Bernard Shaw

You accepted Allah or you had your throat cut by someone who did accept him, and who went to Paradise for having sent you to Hell. ~ George Bernard Shaw

No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office. ~ George Bernard Shaw

People get tired of everything, and of nothing sooner than of what they most like. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I talk democracy to these men and women. I tell them that they have the vote, and that theirs is the kingdom and the power and the glory. I say to them You are supreme: exercise your power. They say, That's right: tell us what to do; and I tell them. I say Exercise our vote intelligently by voting for me. And they do. That's democracy; and a splendid thing it is too for putting the right men in the right place. ~ George Bernard Shaw

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

Classic Insults - The exchange between Churchill & Lady Astor:
She said, "If you were my husband I'd poison your tea."
He said, "If you were my wife, I'd drink it."

"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend.... if you have one." - George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill
"Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one." - Winston Churchill, in response. ~ Eleanor Gustafson

The medieval doctors of divinity who did not pretend to settle how many angels could dance on the point of a needle cut a very poor figure as far as romantic credulity is concerned beside the modern physicists who have settled to the billionth of a millimetre every movement and position in the dance of the electrons. Not for worlds would I question the precise accuracy of these calculations or the existence of electrons (whatever they may be). The fate of Joan is a warning to me against such heresy. ~ George Bernard Shaw

All young women begin by believing they can change and reform the men they marry. They can't. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship. ~ George Bernard Shaw

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

I prefer the man who calls his nonsense a mystery to him who who pretends it is a weighed, measured, analyzed fact. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Those who minister to poverty and disease are accomplices in the two worst of all the crimes. ~ George Bernard Shaw

He who confuses political liberty with freedom and political equality with similarity has never thought for five minutes about either. ~ George Bernard Shaw

When we know what God is, we shall be gods ourselves. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Well, upon my soul! You are not ashamed to stand there and confess yourself a disgusting drunkard. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Women have been a ghastly nuisance in my life. ~ George Bernard Shaw

You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub. ~ George Bernard Shaw

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Apart front the things you can pick up ( the dressing and the proper way of speaking and so on), the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me like a lady and always will. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anything that had my name on it. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Democracy is a word all public men use and none understand. ~ George Bernard Shaw

A socialist is somebody who doesn't have anything, and is ready to divide it up equally among everybody. ~ George Bernard Shaw

The philosopher is Nature's pilot. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Who are those we love? Only those we do not hate. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Truth telling is not compatible with the defence of the realm. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Last Victorian and Edwardian Britain saw a mega-change in reading habits. For the first time fiction took the primary place in book publishing, and the medium was taken up by briliant and entertaining authors with an agenda for 'a brave new world'. Such men as Thomas Hardy, H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw were the opinion-makers for coming generations. 'With the next phase of Victorian fiction', wrote G. K. Chesterton, 'we enter a new world; the later, more revolutionary, more continental, freer but in some ways weker world in which we live today.'
Chesterton did not live to see the full consequences of the change but W. R. Inge predicted what was coming when he wrote:
No God. No country. No family. Refusal to serve in war. Free love. More play. Less work. No punishments. Go as you please. It is difficult to imagine any programme which, if carried out, would be more utterly ruinous to a country situated as Great Britain is today. ~ Iain H. Murray

The whole world is strewn with snares, traps, gins and pitfalls for the capture of men by women. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run. ~ George Bernard Shaw