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
I learned to speak as people learn to skate or cycle, by doggedly making a fool of myself until I got used to it
Every unnatural activity of the brain is as mischievous as any unnatural activity of the body and that pressing people to learn things they do not want to know is as unwholesome and disastrous as feeding them on sawdust.
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.
Common people do not pray; they only beg.
Common people do not pray, my lord: they only beg
This comes of James teaching me to think for myself, and never to hold back out of fear of what other people may think of me. It works beautifully as long as I think the same things as he does.
People exaggerate the value of things they haven't got: everybody worships truth and unselfishness because they have no experience with them
Morality is suspecting other people of not being legally married.
Morality consists in suspecting other people of not being legally married
I am sure that if people had to choose between living where the noise of children never stopped and where it was never heard, all the good-natured and sound people would prefer the incessant noise to the incessant silence.
Most people do not pray; they only beg.
Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time
There is nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school.
Brigham Young lived to become immortal in history as an American Moses by leading his people through the wilderness into an unpromised land.