If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.
Interpretation
Understanding comes through the process of transformation.
This quote by Kurt Lewin emphasizes that to genuinely comprehend any concept or phenomenon, one must engage in the act of changing it. Change requires active involvement and experimentation, which deepens understanding and insight beyond mere observation.
In practice
In a workshop focused on innovation, one might say, 'As Kurt Lewin once said, if you want to truly understand a process, try changing it.'
The American culture ideal of the "self-made-man," of everyone "standing on his own feet" seemed as tragic a picture as the initiative-destroying dependence on a benevolent despot. He felt and perceived clearly that we all need continuous help from each other, and that this type of interdependence is the greatest challenge to maturity of individual and group functioning.
The history of acceptance of new theories frequently shows the following steps: At first the new idea is treated as pure nonsense, not worth looking at. Then comes a time when a multitude of contradictory objections are raised, such as: the new theory is too fancy, or merely a new terminology; it is not fruitful, or simply wrong. Finally a state is reached when everyone seems to claim that he had always followed this theory. This usually marks the last state before general acceptance.
Learning is more effective when it is an active rather than a passive process.
Fortunately I experienced Max Wertheimer's teaching in Berlin and collaborated for over a decade with Wolfgang Köhler. I need not emphasize my debts to these outstanding personalities. The fundamental ideas of Gestalt theory are the foundation of all our investigations in the field of the will, of affection, and of the personality.
In this age of growing interconnectedness, we understand that turning our backs on the world is simply not an option.
I want to go home. Then he mentally underlined the last sentence three times, rewrote it in huge letters in red ink, and circled it before putting a number of exclamation marks next to it in his mental margin.
By healing the internal issues that we can heal as a people, our children don't have to suffer the same agony and pain that we put each other through.
If you're not adapting to the very rapidly changing environment, if you can't think creatively, you lose big in this society because there are very few jobs for you left.
We were thrilled and we were privileged to be part of a revolution, because make no mistake about it, Ted Turner changed the world with CNN.
close some doors today. not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because they lead you nowhere
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