George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was an Irish playwright. His education was irregular, due to his dislike of any organized training. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, his talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays. Nearly all his writings deal sternly with prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy to make their stark themes more palatable. Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care and class privilege, and found them all defective. He was most angered by the exploitation of the working class, and most of his writings censure that abuse. An ardent socialist, Shaw wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society. He became an accomplished orator in the furtherance of its causes, which included gaining equal political rights for men and women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding private ownership of productive land, and promoting healthy lifestyles.

“A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.”
George Bernard Shaw

“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, Preface to Mrs. Warren’s Profession

“You have no more right to consume happiness without producing it, than you do to consume wealth without producing it.”
George Bernard Shaw, Candida, Act I, 1898

“A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.”
George Bernard Shaw

“Rich men without convictions are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity.”
George Bernard Shaw

“Home life, as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.”
George Bernard Shaw, [from the 1911 preface 'Hearth and Home' to his book 'Getting Married']

“Independence? That’s middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.”
George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, 1912

“Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.”
George Bernard Shaw

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”
George Bernard Shaw

“You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.”
George Bernard Shaw

“All great truths begin as blasphemies.”
George Bernard Shaw

“Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.”
George Bernard Shaw

“There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.”
George Bernard Shaw

“People always get tired of one another. I grow tired of myself whenever I am left alone for ten minutes, and I am certain that I am fonder of myself than anyone can be of another person.”
George Bernard Shaw

“When I was young I observed that nine out of every ten things I did were failures, so I did ten times more work.”
George Bernard Shaw

“The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.”
George Bernard Shaw

“A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.”
George Bernard Shaw

“An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.”
George Bernard Shaw

“An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.”
George Bernard Shaw

“An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.”
George Bernard Shaw

“Animals are my friends… and I don’t eat my friends.”
George Bernard Shaw

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

“Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.”
George Bernard Shaw

“Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.”
George Bernard Shaw

“Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty; what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.”
George Bernard Shaw

“England and America are two countries separated by the same language.”
George Bernard Shaw

“Every man over forty is a scoundrel.”
George Bernard Shaw

“Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it.”
George Bernard Shaw

“I have to live for others and not for myself: that’s middle-class morality.”
George Bernard Shaw

“I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.”
George Bernard Shaw

“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”
George Bernard Shaw

“Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen to the world.”
George Bernard Shaw

“People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.”
George Bernard Shaw

“People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.”
George Bernard Shaw

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
George Bernard Shaw

“Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.”
George Bernard Shaw

“She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.”
George Bernard Shaw

“Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.”
George Bernard Shaw