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
When you prevent me from doing anything I want to do, that is persecution; when I prevent you from doing anything you want to do, that is law, order, and morals.
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.
Idiots are always in favour of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favour of equality.
If more than ten percent of the public likes a painting, it should be burned.
The mathematician is fascinated with the marvelous beauty of the forms he constructs, and in their beauty he finds everlasting truth.
Of all the damnable waste of human life that ever was invented, clerking is the worst.
If all you are going to do in life are the things that are convenient and comfortable, the great things never get done.
Well, sir, you never can tell. That's a principle in life with me, sir, if you'll excuse my having such a thing.
Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend - if you have one. Telegram inviting Winston Churchill to opening night of Pygmalion. Churchill wired back: Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the second - if there is one.
My friend, when a man has anything to tell in this world, the difficulty is not to make him tell it, but to prevent him from telling it too often.
I am oppressed with a dread of living forever. That is the only disadvantage of vegetarianism.
I don't. I look my age; and I am my age. It is the other people who look older than they are. What can you expect from people who eat corpses and drink spirits?
I was told that my diet was so poor that I could not repair the bones that were broken and operated on. So I have just had an Xradiograph taken; and lo! perfectly mended solid bone so beautifully white that I have left instructions that, if I die, a glove stretcher is to be made of me and sent to you as a souvenir
A dinner! How horrible! I am to be made the pretext for killing all those wretched animals and birds, and fish! Thank you for nothing. Now if it were to be a fast instead of a feast; say a solemn three days' abstention from corpses in my honour, I could at least pretend to believe that it was disinterested. Blood sacrifices are not in my line