Widely credited to Shaw and entirely in keeping with his public wit, but no play, preface, letter or interview of his has been found containing it. The earliest known appearance is an unsourced filler item in The Reader’s Digest for May 1933, which says only that Shaw “once addressed a company” — no date, no audience, no citation — and Quote Investigator ↗ could not determine where the magazine got it.
“Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week” George Bernard Shaw (attributed) — "Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week." No source in Shaw's own works has been found; the earliest known appearance is an unsourced "Quotable Quotes" item in The Reader's Digest, May 1933, page 16 (per Quote Investigator). Via Quotle.info.
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? We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.
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In context
Evoking the world of George Bernard Shaw — Irish playwright, critic and polemicist · Nobel Prize in Literature, 1925. Theme: "Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The trail stops at a 1933 magazine filler
Earliest known carrier
The Reader’s Digest — “Quotable Quotes”
Date
May 1933, volume 23, quote page 16 (verified on microfilm by Quote Investigator)
Occasion
Unspecified — the item says only that Shaw “once addressed a company”; no date and no audience are given
In Shaw’s own writings
Not found — no play, preface, letter or interview containing the line has been identified
George Bernard Shaw once addressed a company as follows: “I suppose that you seldom think. Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.”
Earliest known text, May 1933
The complete item as it ran in the “Quotable Quotes” department, transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗ from microfilm. Note the opening sentence — already being dropped by reprints in August 1933, and gone from the version shared today — and the full stop where the internet now puts a semicolon.
The earliest instance known to Quote Investigator ↗ is an item in the “Quotable Quotes” department of The Reader’s Digest for May 1933, page 16, verified on microfilm. It supplies no date, no audience and no citation.
It travelled by reprint rather than by witness, and it was being trimmed as it went: Commercial West on 6 May 1933 and the Hartford Courant on 1 October 1933 carried the Reader’s Digest text exactly, while the Christian Science Monitor ran a slightly briefer form on 25 August 1933 — dropping the opening sentence — which the Chester Times reprinted on 13 September 1933, all catalogued by QI ↗.
Searching Shaw’s own remarks about mental exertion, QI found only a letter of 14 December 1894 to the young journalist Golding Bright about the frequency of writing — “you must write, write, write every day for several years…” — which it calls only tangentially related to the quotation being explored. Read the investigation ↗
The line appears nowhere on Wikiquote’s George Bernard Shaw page ↗ — not among the sourced quotations arranged by work, and not in its Attributed, Disputed or Misattributed sections.
The wording has never been tied to a work by Shaw, so there is no publication whose date could settle its copyright status; the earliest known carrier is an anonymous item in a 1933 magazine, which is itself after the pre-1931 line for automatic US public domain. Quotle asserts no rights status for this line — treat it as unresolved rather than free to reuse.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
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Fact-check
How the attribution actually works
Nobody has proposed a rival author for this line. The problem is narrower and more common: Shaw’s name was attached to it by a magazine that never said where it got it, and everything since has copied that magazine.
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Presented as a sourced Shaw quotationGoodreads, BrainyQuote, AZQuotes and the rest of the quote web no source
Goodreads ↗ carries the exact semicolon wording credited to Shaw with no book, speech or date attached, and notes on the same page that its quotations are added by the community and not verified. That is the standard presentation across the quote sites.
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WordingThe semicolon version everyone shares altered
The earliest text is three sentences separated by full stops and opens with “I suppose that you seldom think,” which the Christian Science Monitor had already dropped by August 1933 and which the modern version lacks too; a 1963 newspaper columnist trimmed it further by removing “for myself”, per Quote Investigator ↗.
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Provenance“Quotable Quotes”, The Reader’s Digest, May 1933 unverified origin
This is the earliest known appearance of the remark. QI ↗ notes that the magazine solicited and paid for reader-contributed quotations, that its vetting process is unknown, and that QI cannot say where this one came from.
✓Honest answer: Shaw may well have said something like this from a platform, but nobody has produced the occasion, the transcript or a text of his containing it — the documented record begins with an unsourced magazine item in May 1933 ↗.
Context
Why a line like this sticks to Shaw
By 1933 Shaw was one of the most quoted men alive: a Nobel laureate since 1925, a dramatist of international fame, and a standing fixture of newspaper humour columns. That is exactly the condition in which a sourceless one-liner attaches itself to a name — a magazine prints a witty sentence, credits Shaw, and every reprint afterwards cites the reprint rather than an occasion.
The spread is visible in the record. The item ran in the financial trade publication Commercial West on 6 May 1933 and in the Hartford Courant on 1 October 1933, both matching the magazine word for word; the Christian Science Monitor printed a slightly briefer form on 25 August 1933 under the heading “Shaw Thinks”, losing the opening sentence, and the Chester Times reprinted that shortened version on 13 September 1933 — all documented by Quote Investigator ↗, and not one of them a witness to Shaw saying it.
“QI does not know where the magazine obtained the quotation.” — Quote Investigator
What the 1933 text actually said — and how it changed
The earliest text is three sentences, not two. It opens with “I suppose that you seldom think,” a sentence the Christian Science Monitor had already cut by August 1933 and which the modern version omits entirely, and it separates the two surviving sentences with a full stop rather than the semicolon now standard online.
The semicolon form that circulates today matches the text Quote Investigator quotes from a 1949 New York Times review of Evan Esar’s The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, where Shaw appears as a dictionary entry with the line printed beneath his name — still with no source attached. A Baton Rouge columnist in 1963 trimmed it again, dropping “for myself”. See the citation trail ↗
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1856–1950 · Irish playwright, critic and polemicist · Nobel Prize in Literature, 1925
Shaw was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist, born in Dublin on 26 July 1856 and dead in Hertfordshire on 2 November 1950. His plays — Pygmalion, Major Barbara, Saint Joan, Man and Superman — are among the most performed in English, and he received the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1925. He was also, by the 1930s, one of the most quotable public names alive; that fame is exactly why quips he cannot be shown to have said still travel under his byline, this line among them.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Best available citation
“Quotable Quotes,” The Reader’s Digest, May 1933, quote page 16 — earliest known appearance per Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: I Have Made an International Reputation for Myself by Thinking Once or Twice a Week,” 20 February 2014, https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/20/shaw-think/. No source in Shaw’s own works has been identified.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week’?” Last verified 27 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/few-people-think-more-than-two-or-three-times-a-year-i-have/