It then operates as a condensed available check on the naturally overweening influence of immediate desire and interest over decision.
John Dewey
The Public Record
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century.
gutenberg.org
It is a means of doing for a person what otherwise only his own foresight, if thoroughly reasonable, could do.
If the incidents of a particular occasion exercise undue influence upon the content of a rule of law, it will soon be overruled, either explicitly or by neglect.
Upon this theory, the law as “embodied reason” means a formulated generalization of means and procedures in behavior which are adapted to secure what is wanted.
Law is reasonable as a man is sensible who selects and arranges conditions adapted to produce the ends he regards as desirable.
Only if reason is looked upon as “pure,” that is as a matter of formal logic, do the instances cited manifest limitation of reason.
Invention is a peculiarly personal act, even when a number of persons combine to make something new.
A novel idea is the kind of thing that has to occur to somebody in the singular sense.
The newer an idea or plan, the more it deviates from what is already recognized and established in practice.
The rule has been to look with suspicion and greet with hostility the appearance of anything new, even a tool or utensil.
Most persons object to having their habits unsettled, their habits of belief no less than habits of overt action.
If one wishes to realize the distance which may lie between “facts” and the meaning of facts, let one go to the field of social discussion.