Kurt Lewin Quotes

If you talk about preemption you better know things rather than think things.

we expect definitions to tell us not only what is, but what to do about it; to show us how the world fits together and how its different parts connect and work. ... A label is the first step toward action.

Faith and works should travel side by side, step answering to step, like the legs of men walking. First faith, and then works; and then faith again, and then works again--until they can scarcely distinguish which is the one and which is the other.

A miscalculation is not negligence, nor prudence a crime. I am a scientist. I base my action or inaction upon probability and evidence. There is a reason we call science a discipline! Inferior minds bolt or build pyres to roast the witches in their midst!

Remember that [scientific thought] is the guide of action; that the truth which it arrives at is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself.

you have to love life to have life, and you need to have life to love life

What is being said is the effect of something that has happened; at the same time, what is being said is in itself something happening, which will, in turn, leave its effect.

There's the tree with the branches that everyone sees, and then there's the upside-down root tree, growing the opposite way. So Earth is the branches, growing in opposing but perfect symmetry. The branches don't think much about the roots, and maybe the roots don't think much about the branches, but all the time, they're connected by the trunk, you know?

The element of chance in basic research is overrated. Chance is a lady who smiles only upon those few who know how to make her smile.

You must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences.

Observation, reason, and experiment make up what we call the scientific method.

We believe only in deeds and acts and not in declarations. We are fed up with all those declarations, promises.

I'm always dreaming and doing.

Perception is naturally surpassed toward action; better yet, it can be revealed only in and through projects of action. The world is revealed as an "always future hollow", for we are always future to ourselves.

It's always better to be doing.

If you are going to do anything, you must expect criticism. But it's better to be a doer than a critic. The doer moves; the critic stands still, and is passed by.

I do not want to know what you will hope for. I want to know what you will work for. I do not want your sympathy for the needs of humanity. I want your muscle. As the wagon driver said when they came to a long, hard hill: ‘Them that’s going on with us, get out and push. Them that ain’t, get out of the way’.

My business is to succeed, and I’m good at it. I create my Iliad by my actions, create it day by day.

I never had the ambition to be something. I had the ambition to do something.

It's surprising how many people get bogged down in analysing, planning, and organizing when what they really need to do is take action.

Compassion is the basis of all truthful relationship: it means being present with love-for ourselves and for all life, including animals, fish, birds, and trees. Compassion is bringing our deepest truth into our actions, no matter how much the world seems to resist, because that is ultimately what we have to give this world and one another.

The aim of science is not things themselves, as the dogmatists in their simplicity imagine, but the relation between things.

Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication. If it is true that thought has meaning only when generated by action upon the world, the subordination of students to teachers becomes impossible.

All things arise in unison. Thereby we see their return.

Just as the day cannot exist without the night, just as life cannot exist without death, creativity cannot exist without silence. And vice versa is also true: silence cannot exist without creativity.