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John Dewey

John Dewey Quotes

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Famous John Dewey Quotes

“Democracy is a way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature. Belief in the Common Man is a familiar article in the democratic creed. That belief is without basis and significance save as it means faith in the potentialities of human nature as that nature is exhibited in every human being irrespective of race, color, sex, birth and family, of material or cultural wealth. This faith may be enacted in statutes, but it is only on paper unless it is put in force in the attitudes which human beings display to one another in all the incidents and relations of daily life. To denounce Nazism for intolerance, cruelty and stimulation of hatred amounts to fostering insincerity if, in our personal relations to other persons, if, in our daily walk and conversation, we are moved by racial, color or other class prejudice; indeed, by anything save a generous belief in their possibilities as human beings, a belief which brings with it the need for providing conditions which will enable these capacities to reach fulfillment. The democratic faith in human equality is belief that every human being, independent of the quantity or range of his personal endowment, has the right to equal opportunity with every other person for development of whatever gifts he has.”

HumanityOpportunityDemocracyHuman NaturePrejudiceEqualityFulfillmentPossibilities
Author:John Dewey
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“it is not exact or relevant to say “I experience” or “I think.” “It” experiences or is experienced, “it” thinks or is thought, is a juster phrase. Experience, a serial course of affairs with their own characteristic properties and relationships, occurs, happens, and is what it is. Among and within these occurrences, not outside of them nor underlying them, are those events which are denominated selves.”

MindSelfConsciousness
Book:Experience and Nature
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“Traditional education tended to ignore the importance of personal impulse and desire as moving springs. But this is no reason why progressive education should identify impulse and desire with purpose and thereby pass lightly over the need for careful observation, for wide range of information, and for judgment is students are to share in the formation of the purposes which activate them”

PurposeEducationTraditional EducationProgressive EducationSmart Goals
Book:Experience And Education
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“Los principios son métodos de investigación y previsión que requieren ser comprobados por los acontecimientos; y el esfuerzo, dignificado por el tiempo, de asimilar la moral a las matemáticas, es solo una forma de dar apoyo a una antigua autoridad dogmática o de sentar una nueva en el trono de aquella; pero el carácter experimental de los juicios morales no significa que sean completamente inciertos y efímeros. Los principios existen como hipótesis con las cuales experimentar”

Moral PrinciplesEnquiryMorality Without Religion
Book:Human Nature and Conduct
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“The very problem of mind and body suggests division; I do not know of anything so disastrously affected by the habit of division as this particular theme. In its discussion are reflected the splitting off from each other of religion, morals and science; the divorce of philosophy from science and of both from the arts of conduct. The evils which we suffer in education, in religion, in the materialism of business and the aloofness of "intellectuals" from life, in the whole separation of knowledge and practice -- all testify to the necessity of seeing mind-body as an integral whole.”

KnowsMindArtPhilosophyWholeProblemBodySufferingEvilMoralPracticeSeeingParticularHabitDivorceSeparationDiscussionThemeMaterialismAffectedDivisionMind And BodyMind BodySplittingAloofness
Author:John Dewey
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“The routine of custom tends to deaden even scientific inquiry; it stands in the way of discovery and of the active scientific worker. For discovery and inquiry are synonymous as an occupation. Science is a pursuit, not a coming into possession of the immutable; new theories as points of view are more prized than discoveries that quantitatively increase the store on hand.”

ThinkingWayHandsViewsTheoryDiscoveryIncreaseWorkersPossessionActivePoint Of ViewStoresPursuitCustomsOccupationRoutineInquiry
Book:Reconstruction in Philosophy
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“It is not truly realistic or scientific to take short views, to sacrifice the future to immediate pressure, to ignore facts and forces that are disagreeable and to magnify the enduring quality of whatever falls in with immediate desire. It is false that the evils of the situation arise from absence of ideals; they spring from wrong ideals.”

ThinkingFactsDesireFallEvilForceViewsQualitySituationSacrificeSpringIdealsPressureEndureAbsenceAriseRealisticDisagreeable
Book:The Middle Works, 1899-1924: 1920
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“Intelligent thinking means an increment of freedom in action-an emancipation from chance and fatality. 'Thought' represents the suggestion of a way of response that is different from that which would have been followed if intelligent observation had not effected an inference as to the future.”

IfsThinkingWayMeanHas BeensDifferentActionChanceIntelligentResponseObservationSuggestionsEmancipationInferenceFatality
Book:The Middle Works, 1899-1924: 1920
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“Plato defined a slave as one who accepts from another the purposes which control his conduct. This condition obtains even where there is no slavery in the legal sense. It is found wherever men are engaged in activity which is socially serviceable, but whose service they do not understand and have no personal interest in.”

MenPurposeFoundInterestAcceptingConditionsActivitySlaverySlaveDefinedEngagedPlatoPersonal Interest
Book:Democracy And Education
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“With respect to the development of powers devoted to coping with specific scientific and economic problems we may say that the child should be growing in manhood. With respect to sympathetic curiosity, unbiased responsiveness, and openness of mind, we may say that the adult should be growing in childlikeness.”

ShouldMindMayChildrenProblemGrowingEconomicDevelopmentAdultsCuriosityOpennessDevotedManhoodSympatheticCopingEconomic ProblemsUnbiasedResponsiveness
Book:Democracy and Education: Top American Authors
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“Even the alleged benefits of war, so far as more than alleged, spring from the fact that conflict of peoples at least enforces intercourse between them and thus accidentally enables them to learn from one another, and thereby to expand their horizons. Travel, economic and commercial tendencies, have at present gone far to break down external barriers; to bring peoples and classes into closer and more perceptible connection with one another.”

WarFactsClassBreakGoneEconomicConflictBenefitsSpringConnectionsTendenciesBarriersHorizonBreaking DownIntercourse
Book:Democracy And Education
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“Each generation is inclined to educate its young so as to get along in the present world instead of with a view to the proper end of education: the promotion of the best possible realization of humanity as humanity. Parents educate their children so that they may get on; princes educate their subjects as instruments of their own purpose.”

WorldMayChildrenEndsYoungPurposeHumanityParentViewsGenerationsSubjectsInstrumentsRealizationEducatePromotion
Book:Democracy and Education: Top American Authors
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“A society which makes provision for participation in its good of all its members on equal terms and which secures flexible readjustment of its institutions through interaction of the different forms of associated life is in so far democratic. Such a society must have a type of education which gives individuals a personal interest in social relationships and control, and the habits of mind which secure social changes without introducing disorder.”

GivingMindDifferentFormLife IsIndividualSocialTermInterestTypeHabitEqualMembersInstitutionsDemocraticSecureDisorderInteractionIntroducingParticipationSocial ChangeFlexibleProvisionHabits Of MindPersonal InterestSocial Relationships
Book:Democracy And Education
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“It may be seriously questioned whether the philosophies... which isolate mind and set it over against the world did not have their origin in the fact that the reflective or theoretical class of men elaborated a large stock of ideas which social conditions did not allow them to act upon and test. Consequently men were thrown back into their own thoughts as ends in themselves.”

MenWorldMindMayIdeasEndsPhilosophyFactsSocialClassConditionsTestsThrownTheoreticalSocial Conditions
Book:Democracy and Education: Top American Authors
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“Knowledge is humanistic in quality not because it is about human products in the past, but because of what it does in liberating human intelligence and human sympathy. Any subject matter which accomplishes this result is humane, and any subject matter which does not accomplish it is not even educational.”

HumansDoeMatterPastResultsQualitySubjectsProductsEducationalAccomplishLiberatingHumaneSubject MatterHuman IntelligenceHumanistic
Book:Democracy and Education: Top American Authors
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“The premium so often put in schools upon external "discipline," and upon marks and rewards, upon promotion and keeping back, are the obverse of the lack of attention given to life situations in which the meaning of facts, ideas, principles, and problems is vitally brought home.”

IdeasFactsProblemHomeSchoolGivenAttentionSituationPrinciplesDisciplineMarkRewardsPromotionPremium
Book:The Middle Works of John Dewey, 1899-1924, Volume 9: 1916, Democracy and Education
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“Various epochs of the past have had their own characteristic struggles and interests. Each of these great epochs has left behind itself a kind of cultural deposit, like a geologic stratum. These deposits have found their way into educational institutions in the form of studies, distinct courses of study, distinct types of schools.”

WayKindSchoolPastFormCoursesFoundLeftInterestBehindsStruggleStudyTypeInstitutionsVariousEducationalCharacteristicsLeft BehindDepositsEducational Institutions
Book:Democracy and Education: Top American Authors
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“The problem of education in a democratic society is to do away with ... dualism and to construct a course of studies which makes thought a guide of free practice for all and which makes leisure a reward of accepting responsibility for service, rather than a state of exemption from it.”

StatesProblemCoursesResponsibilityAcceptingPracticeStudyDemocraticRewardsGuidesLeisureConstructsDemocratic SocietyDualismExemptionAccepting Responsibility
Book:Democracy And Education
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“The development of science has produced an industrial revolution which has brought different peoples in such close contact with one another through colonization and commerce that no matter how some nations may still look down upon others, no country can harbor the illusion that its career is decided wholly within itself.”

LooksMayStillsDifferentCountryMatterNationsCareersRevolutionDevelopmentIllusionDecidedContactCommerceDifferent PeoplesHarborsColonizationIndustrial Revolution
Book:Democracy and Education: Top American Authors
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“When we consider the close connection between science and industrial development on the one hand, and between literary and aesthetic cultivation and an aristocratic social organization on the other, we get light on the opposition between technical scientific studies and refining literary studies. We have before us the need of overcoming this separation in education if society is to be truly democratic.”

IfsNeedsHandsLightSocialStudyDevelopmentConnectionsOrganizationOvercomingDemocraticSeparationOppositionAestheticCultivationRefiningAristocraticSocial Organization
Book:Democracy And Education
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