John Dewey Quotes

Were all instructors to realize that the quality of mental process, not the production of correct answers, is the measure of educative growth something hardly less than a revolution in teaching would be worked.

There's all the difference in the world between having something to say, and having to say something.

Art is the most effective mode of communications that exists.

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

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.

Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates invention. It shocks us out of sheep-like passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving"¦conflict is a sine qua non of reflection and ingenuity.

Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.

To me faith means not worrying.

The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to feel important.

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.

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

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

Skepticism: the mark and even the pose of the educated mind.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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. Self-conceit often regards it as a sign of weakness to admit that a belief to which we have once committed ourselves is wrong. We get so identified with an idea that it is literally a pet notion and we rise to its defense and stop our eyes and ears to anything different.