Man and Superman

By George Bernard Shaw

QUOTATION: Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
ATTRIBUTION: George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Anglo-Irish playwright, critic. (1903). Man and Superman, “The Revolutionist’s Handbook,” The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays with their Prefaces, vol. 2, ed. Dan H. Laurence (1971).

QUOTATION: Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.
ATTRIBUTION: George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Anglo-Irish playwright, critic. (1903). Man and Superman, “The Revolutionist’s Handbook,” The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays with their Prefaces, vol. 2, ed. Dan H. Laurence (1971).

QUOTATION: There is no love sincerer than the love of food.
ATTRIBUTION: George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Anglo-Irish playwright, critic. Tanner, in Man and Superman, act 1.

QUOTATION: Civilized society is one huge bourgeoisie: no nobleman dares now shock his greengrocer.
ATTRIBUTION: George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Anglo-Irish playwright, critic. Man and Superman, preface (1903).

QUOTATION: Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced by the inferior.
ATTRIBUTION: George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Anglo-Irish playwright, critic. (1903). Man and Superman, “The Revolutionist’s Handbook,” The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays with their Prefaces, vol. 2, ed. Dan H. Laurence (1971).

QUOTATION: What is Virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?
ATTRIBUTION: George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Anglo-Irish playwright, critic. (1903). Don Juan, in Man and Superman, act 3, The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays with their Prefaces, vol. 2, ed. Dan H. Laurence (1971).

QUOTATION: What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.
ATTRIBUTION: George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Anglo-Irish playwright, critic. (1903). Man and Superman, “The Revolutionist’s Handbook,” The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays with their Prefaces, vol. 2, ed. Dan H. Laurence (1971).

QUOTATION: An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
ATTRIBUTION: George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Anglo-Irish playwright, critic. (1903). The Devil, in Man and Superman, act 3, The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays with their Prefaces, vol. 2, ed. Dan H. Laurence (1971).

QUOTATION: Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.
ATTRIBUTION: George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Anglo-Irish playwright, critic. “Maxims for Revolutionists: Self-Sacrifice,” Man and Superman (1903).

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