“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.”
Shaw uses paradox to argue that social change requires people who refuse to accept existing conditions as final, even when ordinary prudence recommends accommodation.
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‘Maxims for Revolutionists,’ under the heading ‘REASON,’ appended to Man and Superman and represented by Project Gutenberg #26107. Shaw contrasts the ‘reasonable’ man who adapts to the world with the ‘unreasonable’ man who tries to adapt the world to himself, then gives the deliberately provocative conclusion that progress depends on the latter. It is epigrammatic polemic rather than an empirical rule that unreasonable conduct reliably produces progress.