Quotessence
Home / Authors / John Dewey
John Dewey

John Dewey Quotes

Philosopher

Filter quotes by topic

AllSocialThinkingMeanMenSchoolFactsWayEducationHumansActivityFormIfsMayProcessIdeasIndividualMethodChildrenConditionsDemocracy

Famous John Dewey Quotes

“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
Create image

“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
Create image

“To oscillate between drill exercises that strive to attain efficiency in outward doing without the use of intelligence, and an accumulation of knowledge that is supposed to be an ultimate end in itself, means that education accepts the present social conditions as final, and thereby takes upon itself the responsibility for perpetuating them. A reorganization of education so that learning takes place in connection with the intelligent carrying forward of purposeful activities is a slow work. It can be accomplished only piecemeal, a step at a time.”

MeanEndsUseSocialResponsibilityAcceptingStepsConditionsExerciseActivityConnectionsUltimateIntelligentStriveFinalsSupposed To BeAccomplishedWorking ItEfficiencyAccumulationDrillsPerpetuatingSocial ConditionsReorganization
Book:Democracy And Education
Create image

“Experiences in order to be educative must lead out into an expanding world of subject matter, a subject matter of facts or information and of ideas. This condition is satisfied only as the educator views teaching and learning as a continuous process of reconstruction of experience.”

WorldIdeasMatterFactsOrderProcessViewsEducationTeachingConditionsSubjectsInformationSatisfiedExpandingSubject MatterMatter Of FactEducatorReconstructionTeaching And Learning
Book:Experience and Education, 60th Anniversary Edition
Create image

“It is part of the educator's responsibility to see equally to two things: First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of the experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented.”

FirstsTwoIdeasFactsProblemGrowsEducationResponsibilityConditionsInformationStudentsCapacityProductionsActiveRangeTwo ThingsQuestsNew IdeasEducatorLearners
Book:Experience And Education
Create image

“Cooperation called fraternity in the classic French formula is as much a part of the democratic ideal as is personal initiative. That cultural conditions were allowed to develop (markedly so in the economic phase) which subordinated cooperativeness to liberty and equality serves to explain the decline in the two latter.”

TwoLibertyEconomicConditionsIdealsDemocraticClassicLatterFormulasCooperationDeclineInitiativePhasesFraternityLiberty And EqualityDemocratic Ideals
Book:The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1938-1939
Create image

“If the eyes are open and there is light, seeing occurs; the stimulus is but a condition of the fulfillment of the proper function of the organ, not an outside interruption. To some extent, then, all direction or control is a guiding of activity to its own end; it is an assistance in doing fully what some organ is already tending to do.”

IfsEndsLightEyeSeeingConditionsActivityFunctionFulfillmentOrgansAssistanceStimulusInterruptions
Book:Democracy and Education: Top American Authors
Create image

“The intellectual content of religions has always finally adapted itself to scientific and social conditions after they have become clear.... For this reason I do not think that those who are concerned about the future of a religious attitude should trouble themselves about the conflict of science with traditional doctrines.”

ThinkingShouldReasonReligionSocialReligiousAttitudeClearTroubleConditionsConflictIntellectualConcernedDoctrineTraditionalAdaptedSocial Conditions
Book:The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1929-1930
Create image

“What, after all, is the public under present conditions? What are the reasons for its eclipse? What hinders it from finding and identifying itself? By what means shall its inchoate and amorphous estate be organized into effective political action relevant to present social needs and opportunities? What has happened to the public in the century and a half since the theory of political democracy was urged with such assurance and hope?”

NeedsMeanReasonActionPoliticalOpportunitySocialHalfDemocracyHappenedConditionsCenturyTheoryFindingsOrganizedRelevantEstatesAssuranceHinderIdentifyingEclipsePolitical Action
Author:John Dewey
Create image

“No government by experts in which the masses do not have the chance to inform the experts as to their needs can be anything but an oligarchy managed in the interest of the few. And the enlightenment must proceed in ways which force the administrative specialists to take account of the needs. The world has suffered more from leaders and authorities than from the masses. The essential need ... is the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion. That is the problem of the public.”

WorldWayNeedsProblemGovernmentForceInterestChanceLeaderDemocracyConditionsEssentialsAuthorityMassEnlightenmentAccountsMethodImprovementDebateDiscussionExpertsPersuasionSpecialistsOligarchyAdministrative
Book:The Public and Its Problems: An Essay in Political Inquiry
Create image

“The empiric easily degenerates into the quack. He does not know where his knowledge begins or leaves off, and so when he gets beyond routine conditions he begins to pretend-to make claims for which there is no justification, and to trust to luck and to ability to impose upon others-to "bluff."”

KnowsDoeAbilityConditionsClaimsLuckStatisticsRoutineJustificationDegeneratesQuacksBluffs
Book:Democracy and Education: Top American Authors
Create image

“No thought, no idea, can possibly be conveyed as an idea from one person to another. When it is told it is to the one to whom it is told another fact, not an idea. The communication may stimulate the other person to realize the question for himself and to think out a like idea, or it may smother his intellectual interest and suppress his dawning effort at thought. But what he directly gets cannot be an idea. Only by wrestling with the conditions of the problem at first hand, seeking and finding his own way out, does he think.”

ThinkingWayFirstsMayPersonsDoeIdeasFactsProblemHandsInterestRealizingEffortConditionsCommunicationFindingsIntellectualExperienceSeekingNo IdeaWrestling
Book:The Middle Works of John Dewey, 1899-1924, Volume 9: 1916, Democracy and Education
Create image