All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
The vitality of thought is in adventure. Idea's won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervour, live for it, and, if need be, die for it. Their inheritors receive the idea, perhaps now strong and successful, but without inheriting the fervour; so the idea settles down to a comfortable middle age, turns senile, and dies.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Ideas require action and passion to thrive; without it, they stagnate and eventually fade away.
Alfred North Whitehead emphasizes the importance of passion and action in nurturing ideas. When a new idea is born, its initial supporters are driven with enthusiasm and commitment, which helps it flourish. However, as the idea matures and is passed down through generations, it often loses the original fervor that gave it life, leading to its eventual decline. This quote serves as a reminder that without ongoing enthusiasm and proactive efforts, even the best ideas can become complacent and lose their relevance.
Themes
IdeasActionPassionEnthusiasmInnovation
In practice
Example use cases
In a team meeting to encourage everyone to take initiative on new projects.
More from Alfred North Whitehead
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As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.
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I consider Christianity to be one of the great disasters of the human race... It would be impossible to imagine anything more un - Christianlike than theology.
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Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise. "Necessity is the mother of invention" is a silly proverb. "Necessity is the mother of futile dodges" is much closer to the truth. The basis of growth of modern invention is science, and science is almost wholly the outgrowth of pleasurable intellectual curiosity.
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The progress of Science consists in observing interconnections and in showing with a patient ingenuity that the events of this ever-shifting world are but examples of a few general relations, called laws. To see what is general in what is particular, and what is permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
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