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
Martyrdom is the only path to immortality that requires no talent whatsoever.
When I was young I observed that nine out of every ten things I did were failures, so I did ten times more work
Vice is waste of life. Poverty, obedience and celibacy are the canonical vices.
Better a leader of Fabianism than a chorus man in parliament.
Even the fact that doctors themselves die of the very diseases they profess to cure passes unnoticed. We do not shoot out our lips and shake our heads, saying, 'They save others: themselves they cannot save':
Between persons of equal income there is no social distinction except the distinction of merit. Money is nothing: character, conduct, and capacity are everything. There would be great people and ordinary people and little people, but the great would always be those who had done great things, and never the idiots whose mothers had spoiled them and whose fathers had left them a hundred thousand a year; and the little would be persons of small minds and mean characters, and not poor persons who had never had a chance. That is why idiots are always in favor of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favor of equality.
Beware of the pursuit of the Superhuman; it leads to an indiscriminate contempt for the human
Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who looks at it when it has been in the house three days?
The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
The great advantage of a hotel is that it's a great refuge from home life
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
Two percent of the people think; three percent of the people think they think; and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think.
Two peoples separated by a common language' - About the Americans and English
Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.