The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

More from Search for Progress

• Disobedience is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
• That man is never happy for the present is so true, that all his relief from unhappiness is only forgetting himself for a little while. Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.
• Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
• An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.
• Do you know what a pessimist is? A man who thinks everybody as nasty as himself, and hates himself for it. An Unsocial Socialist (1950)
• There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.