To have an idea of a thing is ...

To have an idea of a thing is not just to get certain sensations from it. It is to be able to respond to the thing in view of its place in an inclusive scheme of action; it is to foresee the drift and probable consequence of the action of the thing upon us and of our action upon it.
To have an idea of a thing is not just to get certain sensations from it. It is to be able to respond to the thing in view of its place in an inclusive scheme of action; it is to foresee the drift and probable consequence of the action of the thing upon us and of our action upon it.
 John Dewey

Quotes from the same author

Arriving at one point is the starting point to another.
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 John Dewey
The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.
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 John Dewey
Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates to invention. It shocks us out of sheeplike passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving.
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 John Dewey
Without some goals and some efforts to reach it, no man can live.
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 John Dewey
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of the imagination.
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 John Dewey