40 quotes
The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it.
Shaw does not merely decorate a proposition, but makes his way from point to point through new and difficult territory.
Bernard Shaw in Twilight (1943)
Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
A person is not a democrat thanks to his ignorance of literature and the arts, nor an elitist because he or she has cultivated them.
The Culture We Deserve (1989)
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.
Bernard Shaw in Twilight (1943)
Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game — and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.
The truth is that more and more of the important things in life turn on pinpoints.
God's Country and Mine (1954)
I have always been — I think any student of history almost inevitably is — a cheerful pessimist.
When nothing is revered, irreverence ceases to indicate critical thought.
The ever-present impulse is to push against restriction and, in so doing, to feel intolerably hemmed in.
The Culture We Deserve (1989)
It defaces every type of mental activity — history, art, politics, science and social reform.
No idea working alone has ever demoralized society, and there have been plenty of ideas simpler and more exciting than Relativism.
The Culture We Deserve (1989)
For history, the reward of eluding method is to escape abstraction.
Philosophers no longer write for the intelligent, only for their fellow professionals.
The Culture We Deserve (1989)
It is difficult enough to reconcile these two needs, but the problem holds another hazard: the need of action under the pressure of time.
Bernard Shaw in Twilight (1943)
Great works of art are great by virtue of being syntheses of the world; they qualify as art by fusing form and contents into an indivisible whole; what they offer is not "discourse about," nor a cipher to be decoded, but a prolonged incitement to finesse.
The Culture We Deserve (1989)
Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.
Culture, humaneness, spiritual grace, are not forced upon us by logic: they either are self-evident or pointless.
Bernard Shaw in Twilight (1943)
No one has ever used historical examples, near or remote, with the detail, precision, and directness to be found in every page of Shaw.
Bernard Shaw in Twilight (1943)
Old age is like learning a new profession. And not one of your own choosing.