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

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), the Irish playwright and critic, was famous for epigrams that invert conventional pieties about age, progress, and social “common sense.” This line is widely circulated as a Shavian quip about the paradox of youth: the period of greatest physical energy and openness is also the period of least experience and judgment. It fits Shaw’s broader public persona—provocative, anti-sentimental, and skeptical of received wisdom—though it is often repeated in anthologies and popular quotation collections without a precise citation to a specific play, preface, letter, or interview.

The remark hinges on a deliberately shocking reversal: youth is “wonderful,” yet it is “wasted” on the young. Shaw’s point is not literal contempt for children but a critique of the mismatch between potential and capacity. The young possess time, vigor, and adaptability, but lack the perspective to use them fully; the old possess knowledge and discernment but may lack the same energy and opportunity. As an epigram, it compresses a common human regret—wishing one could combine youthful vitality with mature understanding—while also poking at society’s romanticization of youth as inherently wise or self-sufficient.

Youth is wasted on the young.
Youth is a wonderful thing; it’s a pity to waste it on children.