playwright
and a co-founder of the London School of Economics
. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism
, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism
, his main talent was for drama
, and he wrote more than 60 plays. Nearly all his writings address prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy which makes their stark themes more palatable. Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege.
He was most angered by what he perceived as the exploitation of the working class.
Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it…
Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it…
My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
I'm only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler. I don't like beer.
We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners.
The great advantage of a hotel is that it's a refuge from home life.
My specialty is being right when other people are wrong.
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
You're not a man, you're a machine.