George Bernard Shaw Quotes

He who today utters a bold truth that seems to shock some old institution with the premonition of destruction, and that scares men from their propriety, will a hundred years hence be regarded as a remarkably conservative man. And yet the people who stand peculiarly upon what they call the foundations of conservatism, and hold to hard, practical facts, now stand upon that which one hundred years ago was rank heresy.

It's the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you're mad, then dangerous, then there's a pause and then you can't find anyone who disagrees with you.

No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.

No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law.

… there must be free play for so-called subversive ideas - every idea subverts the old to make way for the new. To shut off subversion is to shut off peaceful progress and to invite revolution and war.

All of us are living with dogmas that we accept as truths. When one of these is overturned, there's an initial gasp, soon followed by a rush of exhilaration.

One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.

Some people think I'm a mycological heretic, some people think I'm a mycological revolutionary, and some just think I'm crazy.

It's always better to shock people and change people's expectations than to give them exactly what they think you can do. It's not unexpected for me to be in a comedy film anymore; I'm no longer the underdog in that world. Not that I'm great or good at it or anything, it's just that I've done a bunch of them, so you're not shocked.

Listen, the next revolution is gonna be a revolution of ideas.

Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated.

Now and then, someone is able to look at an empty space, conclude it would be a great place to start a revolution, and bravely go forward.

Science is the first expression of punk, because it doesn't advance without challenging authority. It doesn't make progress without tearing down what was there before and building upon the structure.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Whoever has an original thing to say, it is sort of a threat to the status quo.

We want to challenge the established ideas with new ideas.

This year's blasphemy is next year's liberating truth.

In the age of revolution you have to be able to imagine revolutionary alternatives to the status quo. If you can't, you'll be relegated to the swollen ranks of keyboard-pounding automatons.

Every new truth begins in a shocking heresy.

You need to be a little crazy to change the world, and you can’t really fake it.

There is only one revolution tolerable to all men, all societies, all political systems: Revolution by design and invention.

A writer should always bravely face life, risking death and mutilation in order to dethrone an emperor.

Each work has to pass through these stages—ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.

And science, when it examines psychedelics, as it will and must, is going to discover a revolution, I believe, that will put all the previous revolutions in perspective.