Quotes from John Dewey

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

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

Liberty is not just an idea, an abstract principle. It is power, effective power to do specific things. There is no such thing as liberty in general; liberty, so to speak, at large.

The spontaneous power of the child, his demand for self-expression, can not by any possibility be suppressed.

Intelligence is in constant process of forming, and its retention requires constant alertness in observing consequences, an open-minded will to learn, and courage in readjustment.

In brief, the function of knowledge is to make one experience freely available to other experiences.

Knowledge falters when imagination clips its wings or fears to use them.

Knowledge is no longer an immobile solid; it has been liquefied. it is actively moving in all the currents of society itself

The real process of education should be the process of learning to think through the application of real problems.

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

The aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education — or that the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth.

The interaction of knowledge and skills with experience is key to learning.

How many students ... were rendered callous to ideas, and how many lost the impetus to learn because of the way in which learning was experienced by them?

All genuine learning comes through experience.

Method means that arrangement of subject matter which makes it most effective in use. Never is method something outside of the material.

Science is a systematic means of gaining reliable knowledge.

Without the English, reason and philosophy would still be in the most despicable infancy in France.

Unless our laboratory results are to give us artificialities, mere scientific curiosities, they must be subjected to interpretation by gradual re-approximation to conditions of life.

The moment philosophy supposes it can find a final and comprehensive solution, it ceases to be inquiry and becomes either apologetics or propaganda.

Independent self-reliant people would be a counterproductive anachronism in the collective society of the future where people will be defined by their associations.

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

Education is life itself.

As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.

The conception of education as a social process and function has no definite meaning until we define the kind of society we have in mind.