George Bernard Shaw was a proud Irishman. He grew up in Dublin before moving to London where he worked a s a journalist and a writer. Shaw enjoyed poking fun at the English and the Americans. Here are some of his best quotes on nationalities:
You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
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Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.
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Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.
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The 100% American is 99% an idiot.
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A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.
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There even are places where English completely disappears. In America, they haven’t used it for years!
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
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It took me twenty years of studied self-restraint, aided by the natural decay of my faculties, to make myself dull enough to be accepted as a serious person by the British public.
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The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.
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We don’t bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don’t dress well and we’ve no manners.
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The English are not a very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity.
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What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?
Go anywhere in England where there are natural wholesome, contented and really nice English people; and what do you find? That the stables are the real centre of the household.
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It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.
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The reason why the continental European is, to the Englishman or American, so surprisingly ignorant of the Bible, is that the authorized English version is a great work of literary art, and the continental versions are comparatively artless.
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England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
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The heart of an Irishman is nothing but his imagination.
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An American has no sense of privacy. He does not know what it means. There is no such thing in the country.
Read about George Bernard Shaw’s life and career
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