Generalization Quotes - Page 3

• Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularly is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Men, Thinking, Class

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• I only know from my own personal experience, and I personally feel that there's a cyclical nature to things, so you don't want to start making generalizations about how bad things have become in comparison to the old days.

  Jeffrey Jones

  Want, Feels, Old Days

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• The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Airplane, Science, Discovery

  Alfred North Whitehead (2010). “Process and Reality”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

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• The eternal is omniembracing and permeative; and the temporal is linear. This opens up a very high order of generalizations of generalizations. The truth could not be more omni-important, although it is often manifestly operative only as a linear identification of a special-case experience on a specialized subject.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Order, Special, Important

  R. Buckminster Fuller “Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking”, Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

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• ..I sought a world philosophy-or an integral philosophy-that would believably weave together the many pluralistic contexts of science, morals, aesthetics, Eastern as well as Western philosophy, and the world's great wisdom traditions. Not on the level of details-that is finitely impossible; but on the level of orienting generalizations: a way to suggest that the world really is one, undivided, whole, and related to itself in every way: a holistic philosophy for a holistic Kosmos, a plausible Theory of Everything.

  Ken Wilber

  Philosophy, Together, World

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• Suppose that you want to teach the 'cat' concept to a very young child. Do you explain that a cat is a relatively small, primarily carnivorous mammal with retractible claws, a distinctive sonic output, etc.? I'll bet not. You probably show the kid a lot of different cats, saying 'kitty' each time, until it gets the idea. To put it more generally, generalizations are best made by abstraction from experience.

  Ralph P. Boas, Jr.

  Children, Cat, Kids

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• All generalizations are inaccurate, including this one.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Including

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• Conclusions which are merely verbal cannot bear fruit, only those do which are based on demonstrated fact. For affirmation and talk are deceptive and treacherous. Wherefore one must hold fast to facts in generalizations also, and occupy oneself with facts persistently, if one is to acquire that ready and infallible habit which we call "the art of medicine".

  Hippocrates

  Art, Medicine, Fruit

  "Precepts". Book by Hippocrates, Ch. 2, as translated by W. H. S. Jones (1923),

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• I tried to write worse but it was no good; my generalizations came out as before, each more exquisite than the last. I grew discouraged.

  Peter De Vries

  Writing, Lasts, Discouraged

  Peter De Vries (2014). “Comfort Me with Apples: A Novel”, p.24, Open Road Media

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• The curious thing about individuals is that their singularity always goes beyond any category or generalization in the book.

  Haruki Murakami

  Book, Individual, Curious

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from May 06, 2012

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• I think one of the things you have to learn if you're going to create believable characters is never to make generalizations about groups of people.

  Mark Haddon

  Character, Thinking, People

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• If there is one sweeping generalization I can make without fear of contradiction, it is that 'change' is the scariest word in the English language Nothing will change in our lives until we change our own behavior. Insight won't do it. Understanding why we do the self-defeating things we do won't make us stop doing them. Nagging and pleading with the other person to change won't do it. We have to act. We have to take the first step down a new road.

  Susan Forward

  Self, Understanding, Nagging

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• The essence of knowledge is generalization. That fire can be produced by rubbing wood in a certain way is a knowledge derived by generalization from individual experiences; the statement means that rubbing wood in this way will always produce fire. The art of discovery is therefore the art of correct generalization. ... The separation of relevant from irrelevant factors is the beginning of knowledge.

  Hans Reichenbach

  Art, Knowledge, Mean

  Hans Reichenbach (1973). “The Rise of Scientific Philosophy”, p.5, Univ of California Press

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• Generalizations, one is told, are dangerous. So is life, for that matter, and it is built up on generalization - from the earliest effort of the adventurer who dared to eat a second berry because the first had not killed him.

  Freya Stark

  Effort, Berries, Matter

  Freya Stark (1964). “The Journey's Echo: Selections”

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• Generalization, especially risky generalization, is one of the chief methods by which knowledge proceeds... Safe generalizations are usually rather boring. Delete that "usually rather." Safe generalizations are quite boring.

  Joseph Epstein

  Safe, Boring, Chiefs

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• No generalization is wholly true—not even this one.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Quoted in Owen Wister, Roosevelt: The Story of a Friendship (1930)

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• Writing about race and crime was not new territory for me. But it can be treacherous. So here are my rules: No stereotypes. No generalizations. No explanations. No apologies. Just the facts, ma'am.

  Colin Flaherty

  Writing, Apology, Race

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• The church as we know it today seems a million miles from the New Testament church. That may be a great generalization, but I will stand on it. There is a gulf between our average Christianity and the church of New Testament that makes the Grand Canyon look like a cavity in someone's tooth.

  Leonard Ravenhill

  Average, Church, May

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• It is time, therefore, to abandon the superstition that natural science cannot be regarded as logically respectable until philosophers have solved the problem of induction. The problem of induction is, roughly speaking, the problem of finding a way to prove that certain empirical generalizations which are derived from past experience will hold good also in the future.

  A.J. Ayer

  Past, Superstitions, Way

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• It is wiser, I believe, to arrive at theory by way of evidence rather than the other way around.... It is more rewarding, in any case, to assemble the facts first and, in the process of arranging them in narrative form, to discover a theory or a historical generalization emerging of its own accord.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Believe, Historical, Atheism

  Barbara W. Tuchman (2011). “Practicing History: Selected Essays”, p.34, Random House

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• If it is to be effective as a tool of thought, a notation must allow convenient expression not only of notions arising directly from a problem, but also of those arising in subsequent analysis, generalization, and specialization.

  Kenneth E. Iverson

  Expression, Analysis, Tools

  "Notation as a Tool of Thought". Cvommunications of the ACM, 23 (8), (pp. 444 - 465), August 1980.

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• Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalization. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.

  Jeanette Winterson

  People, Misery, Miserable

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• ( ...philosophy is more often the systematization of the prejudices of philosophers than the systematization of nature.) Distrust all generalizations: stick to the concrete.

  Epifanio de los Santos

  Philosophy, Sticks, Prejudice

  "Don Pañong - Genius" by A.V.H. Hartendorp, Philippine Magazine, p. 211, September 1929.

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• Travelers are much at the mercy of phrases ... vast generalizations formulate in their exposed brains.

  Virginia Woolf

  Brain, Phrases, Mercy

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• Prediction can never be absolutely valid and therefore science can never prove some generalization or even test a single descriptive statement and in that way arrive at final truth.

  Gregory Bateson

  Finals, Tests, Way

  "Mind and Nature - a Necessary Unity". Book by Gregory Bateson, new edition, 1988.

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