George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw, known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic and polemicist whose influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman, Pygmalionand Saint Joan. With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth26 July 1856
CityDublin, Ireland
CountryIreland
The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.
The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.
We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.
First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.
Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.
Heaven, as conventionally conceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty of people have described a day at the seaside.
Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.
Nothing soothes me more after a long and maddening course of pianoforte recitals than to sit and have my teeth drilled.
The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannot endure it. Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life.
Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.