George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950,) often known at his insistence just as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, and polemicist. He is considered the greatest English-language playwright after Shakespeare.
Born in Dublin to Anglo-Irish Protestant parents, Shaw left school at 16, moved to London, and got into politics in his twenties as a socialist. He devoted many years to becoming a novelist but was a great failure. He found work as a theater-, art-, and music-critic, and set about to develop the performers’ standards and his audiences’ artistic tastes.
Shaw then turned to write plays. During a long and celebrated career, he wrote more than 50 plays, including Man and Superman (1902,) Major Barbara (1905,) and Saint Joan (1923.) His most famous play was Pygmalion (1912,) on the subject of a cockney girl who learns to become respectable in the high society of Edwardian London. This novel became the source for the musical and the movie My Fair Lady (1964.)
Shaw was provocatively opinionated and gained a reputation as a witty and sharp public speaker. Oscar Wilde once said of Shaw, “he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.”
Shaw’s range of interest and inquiry included vivisection, vegetarianism, religion, language, cinema, and photography.
Shaw won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925 and an Oscar in 1938 for his contribution to the musical film My Fair Lady, becoming the first person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by George Bernard Shaw
You have set up in New York Harbor a monstrous idol which you call Liberty. The only thing that remains to complete that monument is to put on its pedestal the inscription written by Dante on the gate of hell: All hope abandon ye who enter here.
—George Bernard Shaw
Success does not consist in never making mistakes, but in never making the same one a second time.
—George Bernard Shaw
The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the parent’s first duty.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Education
Never resist temptation: prove all things: hold fast that which is good.
—George Bernard Shaw
If we could learn from mere experience, the stones of London would be wiser than its wisest men.
—George Bernard Shaw
Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; do not outlive yourself.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Goals, Aspirations, Carpe-diem, Health
The difference between the shallowest routineer and the deepest thinker appears, to the latter, trifling ; to the former, infinite.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Greatness
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Try, Change, Yin, World, Acceptance, Progress
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Hypocrisy, Duty
Nothing can be unconditional: consequently nothing can be free.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Liberty, Equality
The problem with communication is the illusion that it has been achieved.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Communication
Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Cowardice
Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Giving, Charity
We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Soul
Do not love your neighbor as yourself. If you are on good terms with yourself it is an impertinence: if on bad, an injury.
—George Bernard Shaw
Economy is the art of making the most of life. The love of economy is the root of all virtue.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Virtues and Vices
If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn’t be anything for us to do.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Perfection
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Teaching, Education
Imprisonment is as irrevocable as death.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Crime and Punishment
If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself.
—George Bernard Shaw
The love of fairplay is a spectator’s virtue, not a principal’s.
—George Bernard Shaw
Some look at things that are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not?
—George Bernard Shaw
Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones. All men mean well.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Purpose, Intentions
No man dares say so much of what he thinks as to appear to himself an extremist.
—George Bernard Shaw
The savage bows down to IDOLS of wood and stone: the civilized man to IDOLS of flesh and blood.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: God
Youth is wasted on the young.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Youth
The greatest evils and the worst of crimes is poverty; our first duty, a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Poverty
As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Satisfaction, Goals, Desires
Moderation is never applauded for its own sake.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Moderation
It is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to think otherwise than in the fashion of their own period.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Thoughts, Thought
Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced by the inferior.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Titles
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Cynicism
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.
—George Bernard Shaw
As long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Ideas, Progress, Excellence, Goals
The reformer for whom the world is not good enough finds himself shoulder to shoulder with him that is not good enough for the world.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Jokes
No specific virtue or vice in a man implies the existence of any other specific virtue or vice in him, however closely the imagination may associate them.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Virtues and Vices
Two starving men cannot be twice as hungry as one; but two rascals can be ten times as vicious as one.
—George Bernard Shaw
A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Education, Philosophy
Greatness is only one of the sensations of littleness.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Greatness
A learned man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge : it is more dangerous than ignorance.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Knowledge, Education
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