10 George Bernard Shaw Quotes on Wisdom

George Bernard Shaw quotes on wisdom

2. My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

48. 'All very fine, Mary; but my old-fashioned common sense is better than your clever modern nonsense.'

110. The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

113. Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

123. It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.[1]

210. I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig, you get dirty; and besides, the pig likes it.

229. The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.[1]

241. When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.[1]

249. Seeing clearly within himself and always able to dodge around the ends of any position, including his own, Shaw assumed from the start the dual role of prophet and gadfly.

251. He never invested his whole moral capital in a man, a book, or a cause, but treasured up wisdom wherever it could be picked up, always with scrupulous acknowledgment ... His eclecticism saving him from the cycle of hope-disillusion-despair, his highest effectiveness was as a skirmisher in the daily battle for light and justice, as a critic of new doctrine and a refurbisher of old, as a voice of warning and encouragement. That his action has not been in vain, we can measure by how little Shaw's iconoclasm stirs our blood; we no longer remember what he destroyed that was blocking our view.