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 merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Being well-informed without practical application or insight can lead to dullness and lack of value.
This quote by Alfred North Whitehead suggests that a person who merely acquires information without the ability to think critically or apply that knowledge meaningfully becomes uninteresting and unproductive. It emphasizes the importance of understanding and wisdom over mere factual knowledge, as insight and the ability to engage with ideas are what truly enrich human interaction and contribute to society.
Themes
KnowledgeWisdomInformationUnderstandingLearning
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about the importance of critical thinking in education.
More from Alfred North Whitehead
All quotes →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.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
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.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
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.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
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