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To be interested is to be absorbed in, wrapped up in, carried away by, some object. To take an interest is to be on the alert, to care about, to be attentive.
John Dewey
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Being interested involves deep engagement with a subject, while taking an interest requires active attention and care.

John Dewey's quote emphasizes the difference between mere curiosity and a meaningful engagement with a subject. To be truly interested means to immerse oneself in the material, losing oneself in exploration and discovery, while taking an interest signifies a proactive effort to pay attention and invest in understanding something deeply.

Themes

InterestEngagementEducationAttentionCuriosity

In practice

Example use cases

In a class discussion about literature, you might say, 'As John Dewey noted, to take an interest means to truly engage with the themes presented in the text.'

More from John Dewey

Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth. In this way, the teacher always is the prophet of the true God and the usherer-in of the true Kingdom of God.
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Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.
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It science involves an intelligent and persistent endeavor to revise current beliefs so as to weed out what is erroneous, to add to their accuracy, and, above all, to give them such shape that the dependencies of the various facts upon one another may be as obvious as possible.
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For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an ‘ism becomes so involved in reaction against other ‘isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities.
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Any genuine teaching will result, if successful, in someone's knowing how to bring about a better condition of things than existed earlier.
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The reactionaries are in possession of force, in not only the army and police, but in the press and the schools
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