John Dewey Quotes

The demand for liberty is a demand for power, either for possession of powers of action not already possessed or for retention and expansion of powers already possessed.

Everything depends on the quality of the experience which is had.

Like the soil, mind is fertilized while it lies fallow, until a new burst of bloom ensues.

Of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful.

Thinking is the accurate and deliberate instituting of connections between what is done and its consequences.

Man lives in a world of surmise, of mystery, of uncertainties.

Science is a systematic means of gaining reliable knowledge.

Consensus demands communication.

As societies become more complex in structure and resources, the need of formal or intentional teaching and learning increases.

Democracy means the belief that humanistic culture should prevail.

The acquisition however perfectly of skills is not an end in itself. They are things to be put to use as a contribution to a common and shared life.

Thought is impossible without words.

Not perfection as a final goal, but the ever-enduring process of perfecting, maturing, refining is the aim of living.

Communication is a process of sharing experience till it becomes a common possession. It modifies the disposition of both the parties who partake in it.

Education must be understood as growth, or the facilitation of growth.

Men's fundamental attitudes toward the world are fixed by the scope and qualities of the activities in which they partake.

Things gain meaning by being used in a shared experience or joint action.

The conduct of schools, based upon a new order of conception, is so much more difficult than is the management of schools which walk the beaten path.

The struggle for democracy has to be maintained on as many fronts as culture has aspects: political, economic, international, educational, scientific and artistic, religious.

most notable distinction between living and inanimate beings is that the former maintain themselves by renewal.

A tribe, let us say, is warlike. The successes for which it strives, the achievements upon which it sets store, are connected with fighting and victory.

The devotion of democracy to education is a familiar fact. . . . [A] government resting upon popular suffrage cannot be successful unless those who elect . . . their governors are educated.

In general, every stimulus directs activity. It does not simply excite it or stir it up, but directs it toward an object.

A man really living alone (alone mentally as well as physically) would have little or no occasion to reflect upon his past experience to extract its net meaning.

The development occurs through reciprocal give-and-take, the teacher taking but not being afraid also to give.

Nature as a whole is a progressive realization of purpose strictly comparable to the realization of purpose in any single plant or animal.

Continuity of life means continual readaptation of the environment to the needs of living organisms.

A child may have to be snatched with roughness away from a fire so that he shall not be burnt.

Teaching may be compared to selling commodities. No one can sell unless somebody buys.

It has been petrified into a slavery of thought and sentiment, as intolerant superiority on the part of the few and an intolerable burden on the part of the many.

The school has the function of coordinating within the disposition of each individual the diverse influences of the various social environments into which he enters.

Since a democratic society repudiates the principle of external authority, it must find a substitute in voluntary disposition and interest; these can be created only by education.

The religious is any activity pursued in behalf of an ideal end against obstacles and in spite of threats of personal loss because of its general and enduring value.

The ideal may seem remote of execution, but the democratic ideal of education is a farcical yet tragic delusion except as the ideal more and more dominates our public system of education.

A society which is mobile, which is full of channels for the distribution of a change occurring anywhere, must see to it that its members are educated to personal initiative and adaptability.

We have advanced far enough to say that democracy is a way of life. We have yet to realize that it is a way of personal life and one which provides a moral standard for personal conduct.

An idea is a method of evading, circumventing or surmounting through reflection, obstacles that otherwise would have to be attacked by brute force.

There is no common understanding, and no community life. But in a shared activity, each person refers what he is doing to what the other is doing and vice-versa.

A book or a letter may institute a more intimate association between human beings separated thousands of miles from each other than exists between dwellers under the same roof.

Only in education, never in the life of farmer, sailor, merchant, physician, or laboratory experimenter, does knowledge mean primarily a store of information aloof from doing.

When things have a meaning for us, we mean (intend, propose) what we do: when they do not, we act blindly, unconsciously, unintelligently.

Without the English, reason and philosophy would still be in the most despicable infancy in France.

Selection aims not only at simplifying but at weeding out what is undesirable.

Social engaged intellectuals must accept reality as they found it and shape it toward positive social goals, not stand aside in self-righteous isolation.

I believe that the school must represent present life - life as real and vital to the child as that which he carries on in the home, in the neighborhood, or on the play-ground.

Man's home is nature; his purposes and aims are dependent for execution upon natural conditions. Separated from such conditions they become empty dreams and idle indulgences of fancy.

Choice is the declaration by self that a certain ideal of self shall be realized.

Within even the most social group there are many relations that are not as yet social.

The words "environment," "medium" denote something more than surroundings which encompass an individual. They denote the specific continuity of the surroundings with his own active tendencies.

Any experience, however, trivial in its first appearance, is capable of assuming an indefinite richness of significance by extending its range of perceived connections.