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
Faith was once almost universally thought to be acceptance of a definite body of intellectual propositions, acceptance being based upon authority—preferably that of revelation from on high. … Of late there has developed an other conception of faith. This is sug gested by the words of an American thinker: “Faith is tendency toward action.” According to such a view, faith is the matrix of formulated creeds and the inspiration of endeavor… . Faith in its newer sense signifies that experience itself is the sole ultimate authority.
—John Dewey
Topics: Religion
We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or kindness in general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualized, unique.
—John Dewey
Topics: Justice, Action, Wealth
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
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
Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is, not a preparation for life; education is life itself.
—John Dewey
Topics: Education
Time and memory are true artists; they remould reality nearer to the heart’s desire.
—John Dewey
Topics: Reality
A problem defined is half solved.
—John Dewey
Topics: Creativity
Without some goals and some efforts to reach it, no man can live.
—John Dewey
Topics: Goals
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
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
The devotion of democracy to education is a familiar fact. The superficial explanation is that a government resting upon popular suffrage cannot be successful unless those who elect and who obey their governors are educated. Since a democratic society repudiates the principle of external authority, it must find a substitute in voluntary disposition and interest; these can be created only by education.
—John Dewey
Topics: Education
Confidence … is directness and courage in meeting the facts of life.
—John Dewey
Topics: Confidence, Life, Assurance, Courage
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: Success & Failure, Mistakes, Ignorance, Failures, Thinking, Failure
As long as art is the beauty parlor of civilization, neither art nor civilization is secure
—John Dewey
Topics: Civilization
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: Talents, Work, Happiness, Abilities
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
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
To the being of fully alive, the future is not ominous but a promise; it surrounds the present like a halo.
—John Dewey
Topics: The Future, Tomorrow
Complete adaptation to environment means death. The essential point in all response is the desire to control environment.
—John Dewey
Topics: Nature
Search for a single, inclusive good is doomed to failure. Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situation of experience its own full and unique meaning.
—John Dewey
Topics: Happiness
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
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
—John Dewey
Topics: Scientists, Imagination, Science, Courage
The result of the educative process is capacity for further education.
—John Dewey
Topics: Education
To me faith means not worrying.
—John Dewey
Topics: Belief, Faith, Worry
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
We only think when we are confronted with a problem.
—John Dewey
Topics: Problems, Challenges, Adversity, Difficulties
Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.
—John Dewey
Topics: Goals, Success, Goal, Change
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
The outstanding problem of the Public is discovery and identification of itself
—John Dewey
Topics: Problems
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
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau French Philosopher
- Robert Maynard Hutchins American Educator
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