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
Never resist temptation: prove all things: hold fast that which is good.
—George Bernard Shaw
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Cynicism
Every genuinely benevolent person loathes almsgiving and mendicity.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Charity
Youth is wasted on the young.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Youth
The test of a man or woman’s breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Fighting, Manners
People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Worry
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, Excellence, Goals, Progress
Some look at things that are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not?
—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
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
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Happiness, Service
If we could learn from mere experience, the stones of London would be wiser than its wisest men.
—George Bernard Shaw
Though I can make my extravaganzas appear credible, I cannot make the truth appear so.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Truth
Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Royalty
The great danger of conversion in all ages has been that when the religion of the high mind is offered to the lower mind, the lower mind, feeling its fascination without understanding it, and being incapable of rising to it, drags it down to its level by degrading it.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Religion
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Education, Teaching
In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Literature, Books
Imprisonment is as irrevocable as death.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Crime and Punishment
Greatness is the secular name for Divinity : both mean simply what lies beyond us.
—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: World, Try, Acceptance, Change, Yin, Progress
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience!
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Experience, Action
No question is so difficult to answer as that which the answer is obvious.
—George Bernard Shaw
What we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Education
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 more a man possesses over and above what he uses, the more careworn he becomes.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Beauty and Happiness, Art and Riches
In heaven an angel is nobody in particular.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Greatness, Heaven
Activity is the only road to knowledge.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Education
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
—George Bernard Shaw
In moments of progress the noble succeed, because things are going their way: in moments of decadence the base succeed for the same reason: hence the world is never without the exhilaration of contemporary success.
—George Bernard Shaw
Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Experience, Risk, Courage
Moderation is never applauded for its own sake.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Moderation
Decadence can find agents only when it wears the mask of progress.
—George Bernard Shaw
No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Education
Where equality is undisputed, so also is subordination.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Equality, Liberty
The love of fairplay is a spectator’s virtue, not a principal’s.
—George Bernard Shaw
The right to live is abused whenever it is not constantly challenged.
—George Bernard Shaw
Two starving men cannot be twice as hungry as one; but two rascals can be ten times as vicious as one.
—George Bernard Shaw
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
Success does not consist in never making mistakes, but in never making the same one a second time.
—George Bernard Shaw
When it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Crime
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Change
Nothing can be unconditional: consequently nothing can be free.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Liberty, Equality
No man dares say so much of what he thinks as to appear to himself an extremist.
—George Bernard Shaw
The relation of master and servant is advantageous only to masters who do not scruple to abuse their authority, and to servants who do not scruple to abuse their trust.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Servants
The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves.
—George Bernard Shaw
Grain by grain, a loaf. Stone by stone, a palace.
—George Bernard Shaw
Greatness is only one of the sensations of littleness.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Greatness
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
The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Chance, Gambling
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
It is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to think otherwise than in the fashion of their own period.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Thought, Thoughts
In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Art and Riches, Beauty and Happiness
The problem with communication is the illusion that it has been achieved.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Communication
The person I miss most is the one I could have been.
—George Bernard Shaw
What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Beliefs, Religion
Every fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his credulity science or morality as confidently as his father called it divine revelation.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Education
If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Ideas, Love
Life levels all men: death reveals the eminent.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Fame, Death
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Life, Challenges, Laughter
This is the true joy in life: Being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Opinion, Live, Purpose, Future, Work, Nature, Living, Vision, Life
The man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Beauty and Happiness, Opportunities, Reality, Comparisons, Art and Riches
Those who understand evil pardon it : those who resent it destroy it.
—George Bernard Shaw
Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Servants
A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Philosophy, Education
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
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
The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: The Unconscious Self
Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Sacrifice
He who gives money he has not earned is generous with other people’s labor.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Charity
Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get. Where there is no ventilation fresh air is declared unwholesome. Where there is no religion hypocrisy becomes good taste. Where there is no knowledge ignorance calls itself science.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: One liners, Hypocrisy
To a mathematician the eleventh means only a single unit : to the bushman who cannot count further than his ten fingers it is an incalculable myriad.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Greatness
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: Aspirations, Goals, Carpe-diem, Health
Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced by the inferior.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Titles
Some men see things as they are and say, “Why?” I dream things that never were, and say, “Why not?”
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Perspective, Imagination, Vision, Dreams
When a man teaches something he does not know to somebody else who has no aptitude for it, and gives him a certificate of proficiency, the latter has completed the education of a gentleman.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Education
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: Education, Knowledge
The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
—George Bernard Shaw
We admit that when the divinity we worshipped made itself visible and comprehensible we crucified it.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Greatness
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 man who listens to Reason is lost: Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her.
—George Bernard Shaw
Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.
—George Bernard Shaw
You have to choose between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the Government. And, with due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the Capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold.
—George Bernard Shaw
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
The most popular method of distributing wealth is the method of the roulette table.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Gambling
Emotional excitement reaches men through tea, tobacco, opium, whisky, and religion.
—George Bernard Shaw
If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it to dance.
—George Bernard Shaw
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport: when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity. The distinction between Crime and Justice is no greater.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Crime and Punishment, Hunting
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
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
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Danger
If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn’t be anything for us to do.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Perfection
Your word can never be as good as your bond because your memory can never be as trustworthy as your honor.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Honor
You cannot believe in honor until you have achieved it. Better keep yourself clean and bright: you are the window through which you must see the world.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Accomplishment, Honor, Integrity, Virtue, Virtues
We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years, and justify our existence… on pain of liquidation.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Purpose
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
Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Crime and Punishment
The savage bows down to IDOLS of wood and stone: the civilized man to IDOLS of flesh and blood.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: God
Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Virtues and Vices, Virtue, Virtues
As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Desires, Goals, Satisfaction
The most intolerable pain is produced by prolonging the keenest pleasure.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Art and Riches, Beauty and Happiness
The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: That’s the essence of inhumanity.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Humanity, Indifference, Sin
Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones. All men mean well.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Intentions, Purpose
A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.
—George Bernard Shaw
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
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
—George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Freedom, Liberty, Responsibility, Equality
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