John Dewey

Since education is not a means to living, but is identical with the operation of living a life which is fruitful and inherently significant, the only ultimate value which can be set up is just the process of living itself. And this is not an end to which studies and activities are subordinate means; it is the whole of which they are ingredients.

Too rarely is the individual teacher so free from the dictation of authoritative supervisor, textbook on methods, prescribed course of study, etc., that he can let his mind come to close quarters with the pupil's mind and the subject matter.

Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity of life.

Schools should take part in the great work of construction and organization that will have to be done.

To be born, to live and to die is merely to change forms... And what does one form matter any more than another?... Each form has its own sort of happiness and unhappiness. From the elephant down to the flea... from the flea down to the sensitive and living molecule which is the origin of all, there is not a speck in the whole of nature that does not feel pain or pleasure.

Knowledge falters when imagination clips its wings or fears to use them.

Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes. Genuine ignorance is profitable because it is likely to be accompanied by humility, curiosity, and open-mindedness; whereas ability to repeat catch-phrases, can't terms, familiar propositions, gives the conceit of learning and coats the mind with varnish waterproof to new ideas.

Liberty is not just an idea, an abstract principle. It is power, effective power to do specific things. There is no such thing as liberty in general; liberty, so to speak, at large.

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

Intellectually religious emotions are not creative but conservative. They attach themselves readily to the current view of the world and consecrate it.

Some experiences are mis-educative. Any experience is mis-educative that has the effect of arresting or distorting the growth of further experience.

The central problem of an education based upon experience is to select the kind of present experience that live fruitfully and creatively in subsequent experiences.

I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform.

Men have never fully used [their] powers to advance the good in life, because they have waited upon some power external to themselves and to nature to do the work they are responsible for doing.

Without initiation into the scientific spirit one is not in possession of the best tools which humanity has so far devised for effectively directed reflection. One in that case not merely conducts inquiry and learning without the use of the best instruments, but fails to understand the full meaning of knowledge.

The origin of thinking is some perplexity, confusion or doubt.

One of the saddest things about US education is that the wisdom of our most successful teachers is lost to the profession when they retire.

The result of the educative process is capacity for further education.

Since changes are going on anyway, the great thing is to learn enough about them so that we will be able to lay hold of them and turn them in the direction of our desires. Conditions and events are neither to be fled from nor passively acquiesced in; they are to be utilized and directed.

Every teacher should realize the dignity of his calling.

The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning.