Quotes from John Dewey

Since in reality there is nothing to which growth is relative save more growth, there is nothing to which education is subordinate save more education.

The devotion of democracy to education is a familiar fact. . . . [A] government resting upon popular suffrage cannot be successful unless those who elect . . . their governors are educated.

The ideal may seem remote of execution, but the democratic ideal of education is a farcical yet tragic delusion except as the ideal more and more dominates our public system of education.

The primary ineluctable facts of the birth and death of each one of the constituent members in a social group determine the necessity of education.

Intellectually religious emotions are not creative but conservative. They attach themselves readily to the current view of the world and consecrate it.

The ultimate aim of production is not production of goods but the production of free human beings associated with one another on terms of equality.

The experience has to be formulated in order to be communicated.

All genuine education comes about through experience.

To "learn from experience" is to make a backward and forward connection between what we do to things and what we enjoy or suffer from things in consequence.

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

To be a recipient of a communication is to have an enlarged and changed experience.

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

We only think when we are confronted with problems.

To me faith means not worrying.

It is obvious to any observer that in every western country the increase of importance of public schools has been at least coincident with the relaxation of older family ties.

The greatest lesson we can learn from the past. . . is that freedom is at the core of every successful nation in the world.

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

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

To the being of fully alive, the future is not ominous but a promise; it surrounds the present like a halo.

The best preparation for the future is a well-spent today.

Purposeful action is thus the goal of all that is truly educative.

Not perfection as a final goal, but the ever-enduring process of perfecting, maturing, refining is the aim of living.