The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.
Interpretation
The self is an evolving construct shaped by our actions and decisions.
John Dewey's quote emphasizes that our identity is not a fixed entity but rather a dynamic process that develops over time based on the choices we make and the actions we take. This perspective encourages reflection on how personal growth and self-understanding are continuously influenced by our experiences and decisions, suggesting that we have the power to shape who we are.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth.
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.
Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.
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.
For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an βism becomes so involved in reaction against other βisms 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.
Any genuine teaching will result, if successful, in someone's knowing how to bring about a better condition of things than existed earlier.
The reactionaries are in possession of force, in not only the army and police, but in the press and the schools
The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.
People consider the harms they inflict to be justified and forgettable, and the harms they suffer to be unprovoked and grievous.
The greatest need of my people is my own holiness.
He who acts under an emotional impulse also acts. What distinguishes an emotional action from other actions is the valuation of input and output. Emotions disarrange valuations. Inflamed with passion, man sees the goal as more desirable and the price he has to pay for it as less burdensome than he would in cool deliberation.
Birds buildbut not I build; no, but strain, Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. Mine,O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.
We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.
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