Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

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

You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Writers, Authors & Writing, Writing

Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one’s heart; but death is a splendid thing—a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Nature, Death

Every genuinely benevolent person loathes almsgiving and mendicity.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Charity

All sorts of bodily diseases are produced by half-used minds.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Mind

My father must have had some elementary education for he could read and write and keep accounts inaccurately
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Father, Fathers

You cannot be a hero without being a coward.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Heroism, Heroes, Heroes/Heroism

I never expect a soldier to think.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Soldiers

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Books

The most popular method of distributing wealth is the method of the roulette table.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Gambling

Greatness is the secular name for Divinity : both mean simply what lies beyond us.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Greatness

Nothing makes a man so selfish as work.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Work

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

Ladies and gentleman are permitted to have friends in the kennel, but not in the kitchen.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Servants, Service

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

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. There is the whole case against censorships in a nutshell.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Progress, Censorship

A man of great common sense and good taste—meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Originality, Style, Taste

Of all the anti-social vested interests the worst is the vested interest in ill-health.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Health

He knows nothing and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Politics, Career

Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and calves and that men and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Humankind, Humanity

We mustn’t be stiff and stand-off, you know. We must be thoroughly democratic, and patronize everybody without distinction of class.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Politics

As a teacher of Greek I gave the intellectual man weapons against the common man. I now want to give the common man weapons against the intellectual man
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Weapon

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
George Bernard Shaw

Life on board a pleasure steamer violates every moral and physical condition of healthy life except fresh air. It is a guzzling, lounging, gambling, dog’s life. The only alternative to excitement is irritability.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Travel, Tourism

Woman, reduces us all to a common denominator.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Woman

Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced by the inferior.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Titles

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: Laughter, Challenges, Humor, Life

I do not want actors and actresses to understand my plays. That is not necessary. If they will only pronounce the correct sounds I can guarantee the results.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Acting

I’m an atheist and I thank God for it.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Atheism

If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentlemen, he may pronounce as he pleases.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Language

There are only two classes in good society in England: the equestrian classes and the neurotic classes.
George Bernard Shaw
Topics: Society

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