What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
Any man who is not a communist at the age of twenty is a fool. Any man who is still a communist at the age of thirty is an even bigger fool.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that young idealism is common, but clinging to those beliefs into adulthood shows a lack of maturity.
George Bernard Shaw's quote reflects the common perception that youth is often characterized by idealistic beliefs, such as communism, which may seem wise and hopeful at a younger age. However, he argues that as individuals mature and gain more life experience, remaining committed to such beliefs may indicate an inability to adapt or critically assess one's ideals, thus making the individual increasingly foolish as they age. It serves as a commentary on how our beliefs should evolve with our experiences and understanding of the world.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote during a debate on political ideologies in a classroom setting.
More from George Bernard Shaw
All quotes →Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.
Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
Treat a friend as a person who may someday become your enemy; an enemy as a person who may someday become your friend.
The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
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With truths of a certain kind, it is not enough to make them appear convincing: one must also make them felt. Of such kind are moral truths.
Human existence cannot be silent, nor can it be nourished by false words, but only by true words, with which people transform the world. To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming. People are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection.
We're all just songs in the end. If we are lucky.
To give one's life is a right only when one gives it unselfishly.
When we have passed a certain age, the soul of the child that we were and the souls of the dead from whom we sprang come and shower upon us their riches and their spells, asking to be allowed to contribute to the new emotions which we feel and in which, erasing their former image, we recast them in an original creation.