Memorable Quotations from George Bernard Shaw

Born in Ireland, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was a celebrated playwright and acerbic literary personality of the early 20th century. He first attained fame as a music critic, but by then had already begun writing essays, political pamphlets, books and plays. Among his most well-known plays are Arms and the Man (1894), Major Barbara (1905), Saint Joan (1923), and Pygmalion (1914). The last was adapted fifty years later into the Broadway musical My Fair Lady. Shaw also won an Oscar in 1938 for his screenplay for a non-musical movie version of Pygmalion. For all these successes, Shaw is still better known for his legendarily large ego and sometimes cantankerous personality: He was a vegetarian and teetotaler, a radical socialist and social reformer, and a renowned caustic wit. He remained active until his death at age 94. Shaw won the 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature and remains the only person to win both an Oscar and a Nobel Prize.