John Quotes

Not only is social life identical with communication, but all communication (and hence all genuine social life) is educative.

We talk much more about individualism and liberty than our ancestors. But as so often happens, when anything becomes conscious, the consciousness is compensatory for absence in practice.

If there is one conclusion to which human experience unmistakably points it is that democratic ends demand democratic methods for their realization.

Giving and taking of orders modifies actions and results, but does not of itself effect a sharing of purposes, a communication of interests.

The moment philosophy supposes it can find a final and comprehensive solution, it ceases to be inquiry and becomes either apologetics or propaganda.

Understanding one another means that objects, including sounds, have the same value for both with respect to carrying on a common pursuit.

Insight into soul-action, ability to discriminate the genuine from the sham and capacity to further one and discourage the other.

Teachers are the agents through which knowledge and skills are communicated and rules of conduct enforced.

One might as well say he has sold when no one has bought as to say he has taught when no one has learned.

For one man who thanks God that he is not as other men there are a thousand to offer thanks that they are as other men, sufficiently as others are to escape attention.

Time with his old flail Beat me full sore; Till: Hold, I cried, I'll stand no more. Then I heard a wail And looking spied How love's little bow Had laid time low.

Traveling is a constant arriving, while arrival that precludes further traveling is most easily attained by going to sleep or dying.

The scientific-religious conflict ultimately is a conflict between allegiance to this method and allegiance to even an irreducible minimum of belief so fixed in advance that it can never be modified.

The method of democracy is to bring conflicts out into the open where their special claims can be seen and appraised, where they can be discussed and judged.

The bare fact that language consists of sounds which are mutually intelligible is enough of itself to show that its meaning depends upon connection with a shared experience.

As some species die out, forms better adapted to utilize the obstacles against which they struggled in vain come into being.

You can teach students to develop the ability to think reflectively, and you can help them understand what this means, but if they are not inclined to do so they never will.

Poetry has historically been allied with religion and morals; it has served the purpose of penetrating the mysterious depths of things.

I do not think that any thorough-going modification of college curriculum would be possible without a modification of the methods of instruction.

To savages it would seem preposterous to seek out a place where nothing but learning was going on in order that one might learn.

Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men.

Mind is a verb not a noun.

The life of the ancient Greeks and Romans has profoundly influenced our own, and yet the ways in which they affect us do not present themselves on the surface of our ordinary experiences.

Intelligence is in constant process of forming, and its retention requires constant alertness in observing consequences, an open-minded will to learn, and courage in readjustment.

We cannot set up, out of our heads, something we regard as an ideal society.

It may be said that an education which does not succeed in making poetry a resource in the business of life as well as in its leisure, has something the matter with it.

To be a recipient of a communication is to have an enlarged and changed experience.

Good manners come, as we say, from good breeding or rather are good breeding; and breeding is acquired by habitual action, in response to habitual stimuli, not by conveying information.

Every subject at some phase of its development should possess, what is for the individual concerned with it, an aesthetic quality.

Thinking and feeling that have to do with action in association with others is as much a social mode of behavior as is the most overt cooperative or hostile act.

That's just the way people's brains work. If you want to talk about something, you have to reduce it to a form that can be understood. That's one of the reasons I'm not good about boiling down music.

When I joined the band I was coming largely from an improvising background, and the idea of a fluid rhythm that was really coherent attracted me.

For me, the voice expresses things that there are just no other ways to express.

I'm pretty resigned to the fact that I never hear music the way anyone else does, and I no longer find it surprising.

I think I know what my bandmates like or are interested in or would be interested in doing. I take ideas and I develop them, get rid of some ideas, keep writing, and then new things come up.

When I dream about music, or think about music, by myself, I try to be as free as possible and allow my creative mind full reign.

Some of my favorite music is incredibly repetitive, or on the surface has an element of repetition. But once you go beneath the surface, you realize in the repetition is constant variation.

I can talk about feelings, but I can't talk about why this chord on top of this chord sounds cool to me. It just makes me feel a certain way, and I like it.

I think cartoons are important. Tell me that you don't like cartoons, and I think there's something wrong with you. I don't understand why people don't like cartoons.

The more you ride the bike, the better it gets, and the more you know how to ride it.

I had always been heavily influenced by stand-up.

Compromise is an honorable word.

My old daddy used to say "kill the closest snake first".

There is a tendency of the American people to give those who are elected an opportunity to carry out their policies and programs.

I have worked with Presidents since Eisenhower. We serve together.

I think we will begin to see some real efforts made to do things like protecting Social Security and Medicare.

The DOE and DOD are among the most notorious offenders of our hazardous waste laws.

I don't take sides for or against Hezbollah or for or against Israel.

To go to war, you must always think of, can you win?

It's good to be around people who see [photography] as a reasonable enterprise when everyone in the neighborhood may think it's ridiculous. (On the benefit of teaching photography)