Block That Metaphor!

From a review by Steven Pinker of Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea by George Lakoff

The left, by contrast, is more likely to embrace George Bernard Shaw's (and later Robert Kennedy's) credo, "Some people see things as they are and ask 'why?', I dream things that never were and ask 'why not?'"

In Act I of Shaw's Back to Methuselah, in which he retells the story of Adam and Eve, you'll see that what Mr. Pinker (and Sen. Kennedy) quoted is said by The Serpent. I'm willing to concede the left is more likely to embrace his credo.

Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins--or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom--Lucifer.
--Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals (1971) p. ix