Maxims for Revolutionists - George Bernard Shaw, 1903. Man and Superman

"A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education."

"Every fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his credulity science or morality as confidently as his father called it divine revelation."

"No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another."

"Do not give your children moral and religious instruction unless you are quite sure they will not take it too seriously. Better be the mother of Henri Quatre and Nell Gwynne than of Robespierre and Queen Mary Tudor."

"Assassination on the scaffold is the worst form of assassination, because there it is invested with the approval of society."

"Vice is waste of life. Poverty, obedience, and celibacy are the canonical vices."

"To a mathematician the eleventh means only a single unit: to the bushman who cannot count further than his ten fingers it is an incalculable myriad."

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

"The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it."

"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."

"Mens sana in corpore sano is a foolish saying. The sound body is a product of the sound mind."

"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 insubordinate, and the envious share your objections."

"Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get. Where there is no ventilation fresh air is declared unwholesome. Where there is no religion hypocrisy becomes good taste. Where there is no knowledge ignorance calls itself science."

"Acquired notions of propriety are stronger than natural instincts. It is easier to recruit for monasteries and convents than to induce an Arab woman to uncover her mouth in public, or a British officer to walk through Bond Street in a golfing cap on an afternoon in May."

"Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself."


My second favourite:

"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."

And the best of all:

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