Quote by George Bernard Shaw

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.


Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonabl

Summary

This quote by George Bernard Shaw suggests that there are two types of people - the reasonable and the unreasonable. The reasonable ones accept the world as it is and adjust themselves accordingly. On the other hand, the unreasonable individuals strive to change and mold the world to fit their own desires and beliefs. According to Shaw, it is the unreasonable people who drive progress and innovation. Their refusal to conform to the status quo pushes boundaries and leads to new ideas and advancements. In this context, the quote emphasizes the importance of visionary and unconventional thinkers in the process of societal advancement.

Topics

Progress
By George Bernard Shaw
Liked the quote? Share it with your friends.

Random Quotations

That war [Bosnian war] in the early 1990s changed a lot for me. I never thought I would see, in Europe, a full-dress reprise of internment camps, the mass murder of civilians, the reinstiutution of torture and rape as acts of policy. And I didn't expect so many of my comrades to be indifferent - or even take the side of the fascists. It was a time when many people on the left were saying 'Don't intervene, we'll only make things worse' or, 'Don't intervene, it might destabilise the region. And I thought - destabilisation of fascist regimes is a good thing. Why should the left care about the stability of undemocratic regimes? Wasn't it a good thing to destabilise the regime of General Franco? It was a time when the left was mostly taking the conservative, status quo position - leave the Balkans alone, leave Milosevic alone, do nothing. And that kind of conservatism can easily mutate into actual support for the aggressors. Weimar-style conservatism can easily mutate into National Socialism. So you had people like Noam Chomsky's co-author Ed Herman go from saying 'Do nothing in the Balkans', to actually supporting Milosevic, the most reactionary force in the region. That's when I began to first find myself on the same side as the neocons. I was signing petitions in favour of action in Bosnia, and I would look down the list of names and I kept finding, there's Richard Perle. There's Paul Wolfowitz. That seemed interesting to me. These people were saying that we had to act. Before, I had avoided them like the plague, especially because of what they said about General Sharon and about Nicaragua. But nobody could say they were interested in oil in the Balkans, or in strategic needs, and the people who tried to say that - like Chomsky - looked ridiculous. So now I was interested.

Christopher Hitchens