Man is not logical and his intellectual history is a record of mental reserves and compromises. He hangs on to what he can in his old beliefs even when he is compelled to surrender their logical basis.
Interpretation
Human reasoning often defies logic, clinging to old beliefs despite a lack of rational support.
This quote by John Dewey highlights the paradox of human reasoning, emphasizing that individuals often cling to their longstanding beliefs and reservations even when evidence or logic suggest otherwise. It illustrates how the history of human thought is not a straightforward trajectory of rational evolution but rather a complex interplay of compromise and emotional attachment to certain ideas.
In practice
This quote can be used in a philosophical discussion about the nature of belief and reason.
Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth. In this way, the teacher always is the prophet of the true God and the usherer-in of the true Kingdom of God.
Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.
It science involves an intelligent and persistent endeavor to revise current beliefs so as to weed out what is erroneous, to add to their accuracy, and, above all, to give them such shape that the dependencies of the various facts upon one another may be as obvious as possible.
For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an ‘ism becomes so involved in reaction against other ‘isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities.
Any genuine teaching will result, if successful, in someone's knowing how to bring about a better condition of things than existed earlier.
The reactionaries are in possession of force, in not only the army and police, but in the press and the schools
The glory of creation is in its infinite diversity.
I would rather dwell in the dim fog of superstition than in air rarefied to nothing by the air-pump of unbelief-in which the panting breast expires, vainly and convulsively gasping for breath.
Dwarves are not heroes, but a calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not but are decent enough people like Thorin and Company, if you don't expect too much.
Every religious tradition is rooted in mysteries I don't pretend to understand, including claims about what happens after we die. But this I know for sure: as long as we're alive, choosing resurrection is always worth the risk.
What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?
Environmental degradation is an iatrogenic disease induced by economic physicians who treat the basic malady of unlimited wants by prescribing unlimited growth.... Yet one certainly does not cure a treatment-induced disease by increasing the treatment dosage.
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