John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer. He is regarded as one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century. He was also the founder of functional psychology and one of the earliest developers of philosophy of pragmatism. His ideas made significant impact in social and educational reforms. Thoughtful John Dewey quotes on experience, teachers, education, art, democracy, and society will give you the wisdom you need.
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Most Famous John Dewey Quotes
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.
A society with too few independent thinkers is vulnerable to control by disturbed and opportunistic leaders. A society which wants to create and maintain a free and democratic social system must create responsible independence of thought among its young. John Dewey
Purposeful action is thus the goal of all that is truly educative.
All learning begins when our comfortable ideas turn out to be inadequate.
Everything depends on the quality of the experience which is had. Selected Educational Writings
Creative thinking will improve as we relate the new fact to the old and all facts to each other.
The educational process has no end beyond itself; it is its own end.
Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.
Change as change is mere flux and lapse; it insults intelligence. James And Dewey On Belief And Experience
How can the child learn to be a free and responsible citizen when the teacher is bound?
All education which develops power to share effectively in social life is moral. Democracy And Education
I believe that the teacher’s place and work in the school is to be interpreted from this same basis. The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences.
The origin of thinking is some perplexity, confusion or doubt.
If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.
The experience has to be formulated in order to be communicated. Democracy And Education
Schools have ignored the value of experience and chosen to teach by pouring in.
Mere physical growing up, mere mastery of the bare necessities of subsistence will not suffice to reproduce the life of the group. Democracy And Education
The interaction of knowledge and skills with experience is key to learning.
Education being a social process, the school is simply that form of community life in which all those agencies are concentrated that will be most effective in bringing the child to share in the inherited resources of the race, and to use his own powers for social ends. Selected Educational Writings Francis William Garforth and John Dewey
The real process of education should be the process of learning to think through the application of real problems.
The aim of education is growth: the aim of growth is more growth.
The school must be a genuine form of active community life, instead of a place set apart in which to learn lessons.
Etymologically, the word education means just a process of leading or bringing up. Democracy And Education
We do not learn from experience We learn from reflecting on experience.
Scientific principles and laws do not lie on the surface of nature. They are hidden and must be wasted from nature by an active and elaborate technique of inquiry.
You cannot teach today the same way you did yesterday to prepare students for tomorrow.
We only think when confronted with a problem.
Education is not an affair of ‘telling’ and being told, but an active and constructive process.
The imagination is the medium of appreciation in every field. Democracy And Education
The self is not something ready made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.
The breakdown of Plato’s philosophy is made apparent in the fact that he could not trust gradual improvements in education to bring about a better society which should then improve education, and so on indefinitely. Democracy And Education
We are free when our actions emanate from our total personality, when they express it, when they resemble it in the indefinable way a work of art sometimes does the artist.
Knowledge is a possession held in trust for the furthering of the well being of all
All genuine education comes about through experience.
To take an interest is to be on the alert, to care about, to be attentive. Democracy And Education
Perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical fallacies is the notion that a person learns only the particular thing he is studying at the time.
Balance is balancing.
The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning.
A person who is trained to consider his actions, to undertake them deliberately, is in so far forth disciplined. Democracy And Education
I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform.
In undeveloped social groups, we find very little formal teaching and training. Democracy And Education
Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.
I believe that the school is primarily a social institution. Selected Educational writings’, Francis William Garforth and John Dewey
There’s all the difference in the world between having something to say, and having to say something.
Science is a systematic means of gaining reliable knowledge.
Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another. John Dewey
Thought is impossible without words.
Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. John Dewey
Man is logical and his intellectual history is a record of mental reserves and compromises. The Poems Of John Dewey
Art is the most effective mode of communication that exists. John Dewey
Education as growth or maturity should be an ever present process.
We do not learn from experience we learn from reflecting on experience. John Dewey
If all meanings could be adequately expressed by words, the arts of painting and music would not exist. The Later Works Of John Dewey, 1925-1953
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination John Dewey
As a matter of fact, a modern society is many societies more or less loosely connected. Democracy And Education
Time and memory are true artists; they remold reality nearer to the heart’s desire. John Dewey
I believe that in the ideal school we have the reconciliation of the individualistic and the institutional ideals. The Early Works, 1892-1898
The self is not something ready made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action. John Dewey
To be interested is to be absorbed in, wrapped up in carried away by, some object. Democracy And Education
Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes. John Dewey
What holds for adults holds even more for children, sensitive and conscious of differences.
The belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative. John Dewey
Inference is always an invasion of the unknown, a leap from the known. Democracy And Education
Were all instructors to realize that the quality of mental process, not the production of correct answers, is the measure of educative growth something hardly less than a revolution in teaching would be worked. John Dewey
You can teach students to develop the ability to think reflectively, and you can help them understand what this means, but if they are not inclined to do so they never will.
To me, faith means not worrying. John Dewey
Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril Experience And Nature
We only think when we are confronted with problems. John Dewey
One might as well say he has sold when no one has bought as to say he has taught when no one has learned. The Middle Works, 1899-1924: 1910-1911
Skepticism: the mark and even the pose of the educated mind. John Dewey
Language exists only when it is listened to as well as spoken. The hearer is an indispensable partner. The Later Works Of John Dewey, 1925-1953
Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy. John Dewey
Every subject at some phase of its development should possess, what is for the individual concerned with it, an aesthetic quality. Democracy And Education
Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living. John Dewey
It is a familiar and significant saying that a problem well put is half solved. The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1938
To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness. John Dewey
There is no such thing as educational value in the abstract. Experience And Education, 60th Anniversary Edition
The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better. John Dewey
Of what use, educationally speaking, is it to be able to see the end in the beginning? The Middle Works Of John Dewey, 1889-1924
Nature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home. John Dewey
Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results. The Middle Works, 1899-1924
Just as a flower which seems beautiful and has color but no perfume, so are the fruitless words of the man who speaks them but does them not. John Dewey
The first office of the social organ we call the school is to provide a simplified environment. Democracy And Education
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
Selection aims not only at simplifying but at weeding out what is undesirable. Democracy And Education
No man’s credit is as good as his money. John Dewey
Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites. Experience And Education, 60th Anniversary Edition
Without some goals and some efforts to reach it, no man can live. John Dewey
Like the soil, mind is fertilized while it lies fallow, until a new burst of bloom ensues. Art As Experience
There’s all the difference in the world between having something to say, and having to say something. John Dewey
An empirical philosophy is, in any case, a kind of intellectual disrobing. The Later Works Of John Dewey
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. John Dewey
No thought, no idea, can possibly be conveyed as an idea from one person to another.
We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future. John Dewey
Every teacher should realize the dignity of his calling.
Knowledge falters when imagination clips its wings or fears to use them. John Dewey
The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made.
Expertness of taste is at once the result and reward of constant exercise of thinking. John Dewey
Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.
One lives with so many bad deeds on one’s conscience and some good intentions in one’s heart. John Dewey
The routine of custom tends to deaden even scientific inquiry; it stands in the way of discovery and of the active scientific worker. Reconstruction In Philosophy
Men’s fundamental attitudes toward the world are fixed by the scope and qualities of the activities in which they partake. John Dewey
Art is the most effective mode of communications that exists.
Legislation is a matter of more or less intelligent improvisation aiming at palliating conditions by means of patchwork policies. John Dewey
A being whose activities are associated with others has a social environment. Democracy And Education
Nature as a whole is a progressive realization of purpose strictly comparable to the realization of purpose in any single plant or animal. John Dewey
Luck, bad if not good, will always be with us.
Method means that arrangement of subject matter which makes it most effective in use. Never is method something outside of the material. John Dewey
It is difficult to connect general principles with such thoroughly concrete things as children. The Child And The Curriculum: Including The School And Society
Some experiences are mis educative. Any experience is mis educative that has the effect of arresting or distorting the growth of further experience. John Dewey
Some experiences are mis educative. Experience And Education
A tribe, let us say, is warlike. The successes for which it strives, the achievements upon which it sets store, are connected with fighting and victory. John Dewey
We’re all instructors to realize that the quality of mental process, not the production of correct answers, is the measure of educative growth something hardly less than a revolution in teaching would be worked. Democracy And Education
The plea for the predominance of learning to read in early school life because of the great importance attaching to literature seems to be a perversion John Dewey
Teachers are the agents through which knowledge and skills are communicated and rules of conduct enforced. The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1938-1939
Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.
Mind is a verb, not a noun.
Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.
Insight into soul action, ability to discriminate the genuine from the sham and capacity to further one and discourage the other. The Middle Works, 1899-1924: 1903-1906
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
Expertness of taste is at once the result and reward of constant exercise of thinking. The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1927-1928
Were all instructors to realize that the quality of mental process, not the production of correct answers, is the measure of educative growth something hardly less than a revolution in teaching would be worked.
Complete adaptation to environment means death.
There’s all the difference in the world between having something to say, and having to say something.
There is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community, and communication. Democracy And Education
Education is a social process; education is growth; education is not preparation for life but is life itself.
If we learn not humility, we learn nothing.
To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.
One code prevails in the family; another, on the street; a third, in the workshop or store; a fourth, in the religious association. Democracy And Education
To be born, to live, and to die is merely to change forms
Education is one thing no one can take away from you. Elin Nordegren
The result of the educative process is capacity for further education. Democracy And Education
A simple but powerful reminder of the positive domino effect a good education can have on many aspects of a person’s life and outlook.
The outstanding problem of the Public is discovery and identification of itself. The Later Works, 1925-1953
Education is the key that unlocks the golden door to freedom. George Washington Carver
The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to feel important.
