Donald A. Schön Quotes

Donald A. Schön: 3 quotes0 likes

Famous Donald A. Schön Quotes

“Belief in the stable state serves primarily to protect us from apprehension of the threats inherent in change. Belief in stability is a means of maintaining stability, or at any rate the illusion of stability. But the most threatening situations are those that confront us with uncertainty, and by ‘uncertainty’, I don’t mean risk, which is a probability ratio which we all know how to handle, particularly those who are managers of industry. We can deal with risk.”

Donald A. Schön

Donald Schon " REITH LECTURES 1970: Change and Industrial Society: Lecture 1: The Loss of the Stable State http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/radio4/transcripts/1970_reith1.pdf" at the BBC, 15 November 1970 – Radio 4; cited in: Richard Duane Carter (1981) Future challenges of management education. p. 102

“A social system does not move smoothly from one state of its culture to another… Something old must come apart in order for something new to come together. But for individuals within the system, there is no clear grasp of the next stable state - only a clear picture of the one to be lost Hence, the coming apart carries uncertainty and anguish for the members of the system since it puts at risk the basis for self-identity that the system had provided.”

Donald A. Schön

Schon (1971: 51) cited in: Hedley Beare, ‎Richard Slaughter (1994) Education for the Twenty-first Century. p. 15-16

“Old questions are not answered—they only go out of fashion.”

Donald A. Schön

Schon (1971, 42) cited in: William G. Weissert, ‎Carol S. Weissert (2012) Governing Health: The Politics of Health Policy. p. 296