Man and Superman
From the book:My dear Walkley: You once asked me why I did not write a Don Juan play. The levity with which you assumed this frightful responsibility has probably by this time enabled you to forget it; but the day of reckoning has arrived: here is your play! I say your play, because qui facit per alium facit per se. Its profits, like its labor, belong to me: its morals, its manners, its philosophy, its influence on the young, are for you to justify. You were of mature age when you made the suggestion; and you knew your man. It is hardly fifteen years since, as twin pioneers of the New Journalism of that time, we two, cradled in the same new sheets, made an epoch in the criticism of the theatre and the opera house by making it a pretext for a propaganda of our own views of life. So you cannot plead ignorance of the character of the force you set in motion. Yon meant me to epater le bourgeois; and if he protests, I hereby refer him to you as the accountable party. I warn you that if you attempt to repudiate your responsibility, I shall suspect you of finding the play too decorous for your taste. The fifteen years have made me older and graver. In you I can detect no such becoming change. Your levities and audacities are like the loves and comforts prayed for by Desdemona: they increase, even as your days do grow.
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- George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903): "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/end-user.html
"""Master Foo turned to the end-user. “Tell me”, he inquired, “why do you seek the Way?”
“I am discontent with the software I see around me”, the end user replied. “It neither performs reliably nor pleases the eye and hand. Having heard that the Unix way, though difficult, is superior, I seek to cast aside all snares and delusions”."""
- > The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
- I largely agree, but want to note that there’s the counterpoint “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach” (from George Bernard Shaw’s 1903 play Man and Superman), which also has some nugget of truth in it.
- “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
- George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903)The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.- Well,
This quote is from George Bernard Shaw, but it's from a character from a play he wrote in 1903, "Man and Superman". The character is a descendent of Don Juan, a firebrand, but instead of being crazy about seducing women, he's crazy about revolution and anarchy. GBS explains exactly what he was thinking when he wrote this, in the preface, at extreme length:
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3328/pg3328-images.html
The preface is actually a letter to the friend who inspired the play. Some quotes:
> There is a political aspect of this sex question which is too big for my comedy ...
> When we two were born, this country was still dominated by a selected class bred by political marriages.
> I do not know whether you have any illusions left on the subject of education, progress, and so forth. I have none. Any pamphleteer can show the way to better things; but when there is no will there is no way.
> I have only made my Don Juan a political pamphleteer, and given you his pamphlet in full by way of appendix.
So the quote is from that appendix, Maxims for Revolutionists.
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26107/pg26107-images.ht...
> He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
There's at least one other well known quote there:
> The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Did GBS really mean this stuff? Kinda, but he's obviously being playful, because he got an overblown and ridiculous comedy revolutionary character to say it for him, in a work of fiction.
