Every man over 40 is a scoundrel

Yes. The quote is genuinely by George Bernard Shaw, although it was intended as one of his provocative aphorisms rather than as a sober philosophical statement.

The exact wording is:

“Every man over forty is a scoundrel.”

It appears in Shaw’s 1903 play Man and Superman, specifically in the appendix called “The Revolutionist’s Handbook and Pocket Companion,” under the section “Stray Sayings.”

What did Shaw mean?

Shaw loved making deliberately shocking statements to force people to think. A contemporary writer actually asked Shaw what he meant by this remark. The account reports that Shaw explained it roughly this way:

By the time a man is over forty, he has had his opportunity to make his contribution to the world. If he is still clinging to privilege, comfort, or power, he has become, in a sense, a “parasite.”

More broadly, Shaw was criticizing what he saw as the tendency of middle-aged people to:

• compromise their ideals,

• become attached to status and possessions,

• defend the existing social order because it benefits them.

So “scoundrel” was not meant to imply criminality. It was Shaw’s exaggerated way of saying that many people, as they age, sacrifice truth and idealism for comfort and respectability.

Why would Sant Darshan Singh quote it?

From what you’ve shared before about your interest in Sant Darshan Singh’s talks, his use of the quote fits a spiritual theme rather than a political one. He often taught that as people grow older they become more deeply entangled in ego, possessions, reputation, and worldly attachments unless they consciously pursue inner spiritual development.

He could therefore use Shaw’s line to illustrate the idea that:

• merely growing older does not make one wiser;

• if one spends decades serving only the ego and worldly desires, one becomes morally and spiritually compromised;

• spiritual practice should make us more childlike in purity, not more cynical or self-serving.

That interpretation also echoes many mystics. Kabir, for example, repeatedly warns that years pass while people become more attached to “maya” (illusion), not closer to God.

So when Darshan Singh quoted Shaw, he was probably using the epigram as a memorable way of expressing a much older spiritual insight: without inner transformation, age alone often deepens attachment rather than wisdom.