George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

George Bernard Shaw, known at his insistence as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His 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 (1902), Pygmalion (1913) and Saint Joan (1923). 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.

Quotes

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in the world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.
The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

Rules
The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.
We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than saying a drunken man is happier than a sober man.
I was brought up in that other service; but I knew from the first that the Devil was my natural master and captain and friend. I saw that he was in the right, and that the world cringed to his conqueror only from fear.
The Churches must learn humility as well as teach it.
Do you know what a pessimist is? A person who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself and hates them for it.
Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.
Life is a disease; and the only diference between one another is the stage of the disease at which he lives.
I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.
Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
England and America are two countries seperated by the same language.
Success covers a multitude of blunders.
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.
Martyrdom is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.
You see things, and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were, and say "Why not?
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

Education

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