George Bernard Shaw

"Youth is wasted on the young."

"You see things and you say why. But I dream things that never were and I say why not."

"The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time."

"What is a man's first duty? The answer is brief: to be himself."

"Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature."

"Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has seen."

"The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not merely to think about acting."

"Only the facts of nature are sacred; all the rest is human invention."

"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."

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

"Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty."

"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."

"The fickleness of the woman I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the woman who loves me."

"A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic."

"Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world."

"Silence is only commendable in a neat, orderly, well-managed funeral."

"The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not."

"How does it feel to be the most hated woman in England? I don't know. Ask my mother-in-law."

"A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants, and how much more he wants than he has."

"The natural term of the affection of the human animal for his offspring is six years."

"When we learn to read the sky like we read books, we will have learned a great truth."

"Humanity's deadliest weapon is stupidity."

"Do you know what a pessimist is? A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it."

"I hate all poets and painters. Well, I don't hate them, they are nice people, but I think they are irrelevant."

"A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth."

"The man who listens to Reason is lost: Reason enslaves all whose ears she wins."

"Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits. Never traveled beyond their native place and seen nothing."

"Everybody can see that the people who hunt are the right people and the people who don't are wrong."

"The truth is that the public has done the same thing that an amazed householder might do on going into his bathroom and finding an elephant there."

"You can't learn less."