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.
—John Dewey
Topics: Change
A person who is trained to consider his actions, to undertake them deliberately, is in so far forth disciplined. Add to this ability a power to endure in an intelligently chosen course in the face of distraction, confusion, and difficulty, and you have the essence of discipline.
—John Dewey
Topics: Discipline
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.
—John Dewey
Topics: Hypocrisy
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.
—John Dewey
Topics: Community, Communication
The intimation never wholly deserts us that there is, in the unformed activities of childhood and youth, the possibilities of a better life for the community as well as for individuals here and there. This dim sense is the ground of our abiding idealization of childhood.
—John Dewey
Topics: Children
Without some goals and some efforts to reach it, no man can live.
—John Dewey
Topics: Goals
Complete adaptation to environment means death. The essential point in all response is the desire to control environment.
—John Dewey
Topics: Nature
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.
—John Dewey
Topics: Religion
Creative thinking will improve as we relate the new fact to the old and all facts to each other.
—John Dewey
Topics: Facts
Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is, not a preparation for life; education is life itself.
—John Dewey
Topics: Education
We only think when we are confronted with a problem.
—John Dewey
Topics: Challenges, Difficulties, Adversity, Problems
The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better.
—John Dewey
Topics: Self-improvement, Progress
Time and memory are true artists; they remould reality nearer to the heart’s desire.
—John Dewey
Topics: Reality
There is all the difference in the world between having something to say and having to say something.
—John Dewey
Topics: Communication
To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.
—John Dewey
Topics: Work, Talents, Happiness, Abilities
As long as art is the beauty parlor of civilization, neither art nor civilization is secure
—John Dewey
Topics: Civilization
What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child that must the community want for all its children.
—John Dewey
Topics: Children
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
—John Dewey
Topics: Science, Courage, Scientists, Imagination
Modern life means democracy, democracy means freeing intelligence for independent effectivenessthe emancipation of mind as an individual organ to do its own work. 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.
—John Dewey
Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be the device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes the method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men.
—John Dewey
Topics: Philosophy
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.
—John Dewey
Topics: Education
Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes. 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.
—John Dewey
Topics: Thinking, Ignorance, Failures, Success & Failure, Failure, Mistakes
The future of religion is connected with the possibility of developing a faith in the possibilities of human experience and human relationships that will create a vital sense of the solidarity of human interests and inspire action to make that sense a reality.
—John Dewey
Topics: Religion
The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.
—John Dewey
Topics: Action, Choice
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.
—John Dewey
Topics: Luck
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.
—John Dewey
Topics: Science, Religion
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.
—John Dewey
Topics: Logic
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.
—John Dewey
Topics: Choice, Habits
Confidence … is directness and courage in meeting the facts of life.
—John Dewey
Topics: Assurance, Courage, Life, Confidence
Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.
—John Dewey
Topics: Success, Goal, Goals, Change
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- William James American Philosopher
- Charles Sanders Peirce American Philosopher
- Mortimer J. Adler American Philosopher, Educator
- George Santayana Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
- Eric Hoffer American Philosopher
- Carl Rogers American Psychologist
- Nicholas Murray Butler American Philosopher
- Will Durant American Historian, Philosopher
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau French Philosopher
- Robert Maynard Hutchins American Author, Academic
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