John Dewey

John Dewey

John Dewey (October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey is one of the primary figures associated with the philosophy of pragmatism and is considered one of the fathers of functional psychology. 

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Education is not a preparation for life, education is life itself.

Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates to invention. It shocks us out of sheeplike passivity and sets us at noting and contriving.

Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.

The self is not something ready-made but something in continuous formation through choice of action.

Education is a social process, education is growth, education is not a preparation for life but is life itself.

One lives with so many bad deeds on one's conscience and some good intentions in one's heart.

By reading the characteristic features of any man's castles in the air, you can make a shrewd guess as to his underlying desires which are frustrated.

Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.

Luck, bad if not good, will always be with us. But it has a way of favoring the intelligent and showing its back to the stupid.

I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child's powers, by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself.

Time and memory are true artists, they remold reality nearer to the heart's desire.

A democracy is more than a form of government, it is primarily a mode of associated living of conjoint communicated experience

To find out what one is fitted to do and to secure an opportunity to do it is the key to happiness

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

Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situations of experience its own full and unique meaning.

The outstanding problem of the Public is discovery and identification of itself

The deepest urge in human nature is "the desire to be important"

It (modern philosophy) certainly exacts a surrender of all supernaturalism and fixed dogma and rigid institutionalism, with which Christianity has been historically associated.

We eat out all the time and you have no idea what you're eating.

Those outages were caused by separate equipment failures

We naturally associate democracy to be sure with freedom of action but freedom of action without freed capacity of thought behind it is only chaos

The good man is the man who no matter how morally unworthy he has been is moving to become better

School is not preparation for life but school is life

The very problem of mind and body suggests division, I do not know of anything so disastrously affected by the habit of division as this particular theme. In its discussion are reflected the splitting off from each other of religion morals and science, the divorce of philosophy from science and of both from the arts of conduct. The evils which we suffer in education in religion in the materialism of business and the aloofness of "intellectuals" from life in the whole separation of knowledge and practice -- all testify to the necessity of seeing mind-body as an integral whole.

Those outages were caused by separate equipment failures.

The reason the outages affected the same group and not other areas is because those customers are served by the same cable loop and the cable loop was affected by equipment failures. But the cable itself is in good working order.

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think -- rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.

The religious is any activity pursued in behalf of an ideal end against obstacles and in spite of threats of personal loss because of its general and enduring value.

We cannot seek or attain health wealth learning justice or kindness in general. Action is always specific concrete individualized unique.

Education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness, and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction.

The reason the outages affected the same group and not other areas is because those customers are served by the same cable loop and the cable loop was affected by equipment failures ... But the cable itself is in good working order.

There is something going on at Northeastern. We sent a technician out there and all our equipment checked out fine. Right now the customer is looking at what issues they may have.

There is nothing left worth preserving in the notions of unseen powers controlling human destiny to which obedience and worship are due

The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troublesome work to undertake the alternation of old beliefs.

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.

To me faith means not worrying.

Man is not logical and his intellectual history is a record of mental reserves and compromises. He hangs on to what he can in his old beliefs even when he is compelled to surrender their logical basis.

Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.

To find out what one is fitted to do and to secure and opportunity to do it is the key to happiness

Genuine ignorance is... profitable, because it is likely to be accompanied by humility, curiosity and open mindedness, whereas ability to repeat catch-phrases, cant terms, familiar propositions, gives the conceit of learning and coats the mind with varnish waterproof to new ideas.

As long as art is the beauty parlor of civilization neither art nor civilization is secure

Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy.

The only freedom that is of enduring importance is the freedom of intelligence that is to say freedom of observation and of judgment exercised in behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worth while. The commonest mistake made about freedom is I think to identify it with freedom of movement or with the external or physical side of activity.

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

Just as a flower which seems beautiful and has color but no perfume so are the fruitless words of the man who speaks them but does them not.

The reactionaries are in possession of force in not only the army and police but in the press and the schools

When men think and believe in one set of symbols and act in ways which are contrary to their professed and conscious ideas confusion and insincerity are bound to result

We only think when we are confronted with a problem

The end justifies the means only when the means used are such as actually bring about the desired and desirable end.

For one man who thanks God that he is not as other men there are a thousand to offer thanks that they are as other men sufficiently as others are to escape attention

Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril.

No man's credit is as good as his money.

Without some goals and some efforts to reach it no man can live.

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