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MassPikeMikelast Sunday at 3:16 AM1 replyview on HN

This puts me in mind of the words of George Bernard Shaw:

‘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.'


Replies

lioeterslast Sunday at 10:55 AM

And the world, people as a mob, will try its best to punish that person for daring to be different. The nail that sticks out gets beaten.

RMS is a flawed person, a stubborn unreasonable man with questionable traits. But dismissing his life's work as "said some decent things" is just ignorant revisionist history. We can acknowledge his flaws while respecting the work he did and the overall message, which changed the world for the better.