People foolishly oppose generalization. One often hears, 'Never generalize!' But that itself is a generalization in the imperative mood. The partisan of brute particularity who so opines is hoist by his own petard.
So it was with pleasure that I heard Dennis Prager one day remark that "Generalizations are the mother of wisdom." But my man had the cart before the horse. Being a quibbler and a pedant, I cannot forebear to suggest an improvement:
Generalizations are the offspring of wisdom
Or perhaps:
Generalization is wisdom's distillate.
For wisdom does not spring from generalization; it is rather that (true) generalizations spring from wisdom as its expression and codification.
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