John Dewey

Confidence is directness and courage in meeting the facts of life.

— John Dewey

Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity of life.

— John Dewey

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

— John Dewey

Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.

— John Dewey

Selection aims not only at simplifying but at weeding out what is undesirable.

— John Dewey

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

— John Dewey

All learning begins when our comfortable ideas turn out to be inadequate.

— John Dewey

The goal of education is to enable individuals to continue their education.

— John Dewey

Language exists only when it is listened to as well as spoken. The hearer is an indispensable partner.

— John Dewey

There is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community, and communication.

— John Dewey

Experience alone cannot deliver to us necessary truths; truths completely demonstrated by reason. Its conclusions are particular, not universal.

— John Dewey

The acquisition of skills is not an end in itself. They are things to be put to use, and that use is…

— John Dewey

The central problem of an education based upon experience is to select the kind of present experience that live fruitfully and creatively…

— John Dewey

Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking;…

— John Dewey

If there is one conclusion to which human experience unmistakably points it is that democratic ends demand democratic methods for their realization.

— John Dewey

Communication is a process of sharing experience till it becomes a common possession. It modifies the disposition of both the parties who…

— John Dewey

The function of criticism is the reeducation of perception of works of art? The conception that its business is to appraise, to…

— John Dewey

Doctrine that eliminates or even obscures the function of choice of values and enlistment of desires and emotions in behalf of those…

— John Dewey

Man's home is nature; his purposes and aims are dependent for execution upon natural conditions. Separated from such conditions they become empty…

— John Dewey

Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living. Without some goals and some efforts to reach…

— John Dewey

Liberty is not just an idea, an abstract principle. It is power, effective power to do specific things. There is no such…

— John Dewey

All of us have many habits of whose import we are quite unaware, since they were formed without our knowing what we…

— John Dewey

It science involves an intelligent and persistent endeavor to revise current beliefs so as to weed out what is erroneous, to add…

— John Dewey

Were all instructors to realize that the quality of mental process, not the production of correct answers, is the measure of educative…

— John Dewey

Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes. Genuine ignorance is…

— John Dewey

Personality must be educated, and personality cannot be educated by confining its operations to technical and specialized things, or to the less…

— John Dewey

Adults are naturally most conscious of directing the conduct of others when they are immediately aiming so to do. As a rule,…

— John Dewey

“Empirically, things are poignant, tragic, beautiful, humorous, settled, disturbed, comfortable, annoying, barren, harsh, consoling, splendid, fearful; are such immediately and in their…

— John Dewey

Man is merely a frequent effect, a monstrosity is a rare one, but both are equally natural, equally inevitable, equally part of…

— John Dewey

Every one has experienced how learning an appropriate name for what was dim and vague cleared up and crystallized the whole matter.…

— John Dewey

As formal teaching and training grow in extent, there is the danger of creating an undesirable split between the experience gained in…

— John Dewey

When the child sees the parent looking for something, it is as natural for it also to look for the object and…

— John Dewey

Every teacher should realize the dignity of his calling.

— John Dewey

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

— John Dewey

All education which develops power to share effectively in social life is moral.

— John Dewey

Things gain meaning by being used in a shared experience or joint action.

— John Dewey

Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business.

— John Dewey

“We only think when confronted with a problem.”

— John Dewey

All genuine learning comes through experience.

— John Dewey

...the moment of passage from disturbance into harmony is that of intensest life.

— John Dewey