“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
This is one of my favorite quotes. Back then there wasn’t much talk about women, so let’s just substitute man with person.
I like this quote so much because I think we all are too reasonable most of the time, meaning we are all too willing to accept whatever is thrown at us. To improve our world, we should be unreasonable much more often.
Being reasonable is often also used as a synonym for being nice.
For example, if someone hits your car and both sides act reasonable. That’s nice.
But I am thinking more of situations when we have a gut feeling that things could be much better, but everyone and everything tell us they can’t be changed. Those are exactly the moments when we should be unreasonable and attempt the change even if it is against all the odds.
“That’s never been done” are the words of the reasonable people when they want to explain to you how wrong you are. “We’ve always done it this way, why should we change it?”
It saved lives when Doctors finally started washing their hands. I am happy that I don’t have to walk to work, get my water at the well or have to sit in the dark when the sun goes down. Many unreasonable men and women made our lives a lot better.
We regularly stumble over things that are just not right. How about we are so unreasonable and try changing them?