Explore Quotes by John Dewey

There is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community, and communication.... Try the experiment of communicating, with fullness and accuracy, some experience to another, especially if it be somewhat complicated, and you will find your own attitude toward your experience changing.

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.

Any genuine teaching will result, if successful, in someone's knowing how to bring about a better condition of things than existed earlier.

One can think effectively only when one is willing to endure suspense and to undergo the trouble of searching.

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 aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education ... (and) the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth. Now this idea cannot be applied to all the members of a society except where intercourse of man with man is mutual, and except where there is adequate provision for the reconstruction of social habits and institutions by means of wide stimulation arising from equitably distributed interests. And this means a democratic society.

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.

Complete adaptation to environment means death. The essential point in all response is the desire to control environment.

The notion that "applied" knowledge is somehow less worthy than "pure" knowledge, was natural to a society in which all useful work was performed by slaves and serfs, and in which industry was controlled by the models set by custom rather than by intelligence. Science, or the highest knowing, was then identified with pure theorizing, apart from all application in the uses of life; and knowledge relating to useful arts suffered the stigma attaching to the classes who engaged in them.

Doctrine that eliminates or even obscures the function of choice of values and enlistment of desires and emotions in behalf of those chosen weakens personal responsibility for judgment and for action. It thus helps create the attitudes that welcome and support the totalitarian state.

The ultimate aim of production is not production of goods but the production of free human beings associated with one another on terms of equality.

What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children.

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.

If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.

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

We do not learn from experience...we learn from reflecting on experience.

Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.

The only way to abolish war is to make peace seem heroic.