“A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does NOT triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.”
More from George Bernard Shaw on Philosophy
“Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.”
“Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error.”
“The word morality, if we met it in the Bible, would surprise us as much as the word telephone or motor car.”
“Nobody could stand an eternity of Heaven.”
“Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.”
“[Man] progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself.”
“Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn’t really hurt.”
“How can she? She's incapable of understanding anything. Besides, do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we ever do it?”
“A man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself.”
“Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.”
Others on Philosophy
Ludwig Wittgenstein
22 quotes“The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.”
Christopher Hitchens
22 quotes“How much vanity must be concealed – not too effectively at that – in order to pretend that one is the personal object of...”
Nietzsche
22 quotes“One does not hate as long as one has a low esteem of someone, but only when one esteems him as an equal or a superior.”
Carl Jung
21 quotes“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”
Immanuel Kant
20 quotes“Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.”
Heraclitus
19 quotes“All things flow nothing abides.”
H. L. Mencken
17 quotes“We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.”
C.S. Lewis
15 quotes“[Consciousness] is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
14 quotes“Consciousness is man's greatest misfortune, still I know that man loves it and will not exchange it for any satisfaction...”
Samuel Beckett
14 quotes“The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.”
Napoleon
14 quotes“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”
Isaac Asimov
13 quotes“Society is much more easily soothed than one's own conscience.”