"George Bernard Shaw once observed that all progress depends on the unreasonable man. His argument was that the reasonable man adapts himself to the world, while the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself; therefore, for any change of consequence, we must look to the unreasonable man.

"While in Shaw's day, perhaps, most men were reasonable, we are now entering an Age of Unreason, when the future, in so many areas, is there to be shaped, by us and for us - - - a time when the only prediction that will hold true is that no prediction will hold true; a time, therefore, for bold imaginings in private life as well as public, for thinking the unlikely and doing the unreasonable."

From The Age of Unreason
by Charles Handy
Harvard Business Press, 1989


George Bernard Shaw Quotes:

• Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

• You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"

• People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.

• A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

• An American has no sense of privacy. He does not know what it means.There is no such thing in the country.

• If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.