George Bernard Shaw

"He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career."
-  George Bernard Shaw, 1856 - 1950
Erse dramatist, author and Nobel Prize Laureate

"Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."
-- George Bernard Shaw

"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."

-- George Bernard Shaw 

"You see things; and you say: "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say: "Why not?""

-- George Bernard Shaw

"Assassination is the extreme form of censorship."

--- George Bernard Shaw

"Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children."

-- George Bernard Shaw

Shaw was born in Dublin, where his father was an unsuccessful grain merchant and sometime civil servant and his mother was a professional singer.

 Shaw was as an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, 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. An ardent socialist, Shaw wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society, a middle class organization established in 1884 to promote the gradual spread of socialism by peaceful means

He became an accomplished orator in the furtherance of the Fabian Society causes, which included: 


-gaining equal rights for men and women, 


-alleviating abuses of the working class, 


-rescinding private ownership of productive land, and 


-promoting healthy lifestyles.

An explanatory note appearing on the title page of the Fabian group's first pamphlet declared:


"For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently*, when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your waiting will be in vain, and fruitless."*

Today, the society functions primarily as a think tank and is one of 15 socialist societies affiliated with the Labour Party. Similar societies exist in Australia (the Australian Fabian Society), Canada (the Douglas-Coldwell Foundation and in the past the League for Social Reconstruction) and in New Zealand.

He is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize in Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938), for his contributions to literature and for his work on the film Pygmalion (adaptation of his play of the same name), respectively.

 Shaw wanted to refuse his Nobel Prize outright because he had no desire for public honours, but accepted it at his wife's behest: she considered it a tribute to Ireland. He did reject the monetary award, requesting it be used to finance translation of Swedish books into English.

Shaw died there, aged 94, from chronic problems exacerbated by injuries he incurred by falling from a ladder.

P.S. His wife was a wealthy Heiress which critics might say allowed him the luxury of indulging in his hobby of Socialist Speech Making.

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*The Fabian strategy is a military strategy where pitched battles and frontal assaults are avoided in favor of wearing down an opponent through a war of attrition and indirection. While avoiding decisive battles, the side employing this strategy harasses its enemy through skirmishes to cause attrition, disrupt supply and affect morale. Employment of this strategy implies that the weaker side believes time is on its side, but it may also be adopted when no feasible alternative strategy can be devised.


This strategy derives its name from Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, the dictator of the Roman Republic given the task of defeating the great Carthaginian general Hannibal in southern Italy during the Second Punic War (218–202 BC). At the start of the war, Hannibal boldly crossed the Alps in wintertime and invaded Italy. Due to Hannibal's skill as a general, he repeatedly inflicted devastating losses on the Romans despite the numerical inferiority of his army...

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw