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John Dewey

84 quotes

“It is no accident that all democracies have put a high estimate upon education; that schooling has been their first care and enduring charge. Only through education can equality of opportunity be anything more than a phrase. Accidental inequalities of birth, wealth, and learning are always tending to restrict the opportunities of some as compared with those of others. Only free and continued education can counteract those forces which are always at work to restore, in however changed a form, feudal oligarchy. Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Need of an Industrial Education in an Industrial Democracy,” Manual Training and Vocational Education17 (1916); also Middle Works 10: 137-143.
“While they denounce as subversive anarchy signs of independent thought, of thinking for themselves on the part of others lest such thought disturb the conditions by which they profit, they think quite literally for themselves, that is of themselves.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Human Nature and Conduct (1921) Part 1 Section IV.
“Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Quest for Certainty (1929), Ch. XI
“As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in John Dewey and American Democracy by Robert Westbrook (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 440; cited in Understanding Power (2002) by Noam Chomsky, ch. 9, footnote 16; originally from "The Need for a …
“Legislation is a matter of more or less intelligent improvisation aiming at palliating conditions by means of patchwork policies.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The American Background, Freedom and Culture (1939)
“Democracy means the belief that humanistic culture should prevail.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Democracy and Human Nature, Freedom and Culture (1939)
“This intelligence-testing business reminds me of the way they used to weigh hogs in Texas. They would get a long plank, put it over a cross-bar, and somehow tie the hog on one end of the plank. They'd search all around till they found a stone that would balance the weight of the hog and they'd put that on the other end of the plank. Then they'd guess the weight of the stone.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted by Dorothy Canfield Fisher in Vermont Tradition (1953)
“So we are always esthetically disappointed when the sensuous qualities and the intellectual properties of an object do not coalesce.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The determination of the mot juste, of the right incident in the right place, of exquisiteness of proportion, of the precise tone, hue, and shade that helps unify the whole while it defines a part, is accomplished by emotion. Not every emotion, however, can do this work, but only one informed by material that is grasped and gathered. Emotion is informed and carried forward when it is spent indirectly in search for material and in giving it order, not when it is directly expended.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even the eye that is artificially trained to see color as color, apart from things that colors qualify, cannot shut out the resonances and transfers of value.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Relation” in its idiomatic usage denotes something direct and active, something dynamic and energetic. It fixes attention upon the way things bear upon one another, their clashings and unitings, the way they fulfill and frustrate, promote and retard, excite and inhibit one another. Intellectual relations subsist in propositions; they state the connection of terms with one another. In art, as in nature and in life, relations are modes of interaction.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Art expresses, it does not state; it is concerned with existences in their perceived qualities, not with conceptions symbolized in terms.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What happens in the movement of art is emergence of new materials of experience demanding expression, and therefore involving in their expression new forms and techniques.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Well both original seizure and subsequent critical discrimination have equal claims, each to its own complete development and must not be forgotten that direct and unreasoned impression comes first. There is such occasions something of the quality of the wind that bloweth where it listeth. Sometimes it comes and sometimes it does not, even in the presence of the same object. It cannot be forced and when it does not arrive it is not wise to seek to recover by direct action the first fine rapture.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Naturalism is a word of many meetings in philosophy as well as in art. like most isms — classicism and romanticism, idealism and realism in art — it’s has become an emotional term, a war cry of partisans.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The true antithesis of nature is not art but arbitrary conceit, fantasy, and stereotyped convention.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Equally there is no rhythm when variations are not placed. There is a wealth of suggestions in the phrase “takes place”. The change not only comes but it belongs; it had its definite place in a larger whole.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In most cases the esthetic objection to doses of morals and of economic or political propaganda in works of art will be found upon analysis to reside in the over-weighing of certain values at the expense of others until, except for those in a similar stare of one-sides enthusiasm, weariness rather than refreshment sets in.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Because energy is not restrained by other elements that are at once antagonistic and cooperative, action proceeds by jerks and spasms. There is discontinuity.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No work of art can be instantaneously perceived because there is the no opportunity for conservation and increase in tension, and hence none for that release and unfolding which gives volume to a work of art.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Interest only becomes one-sided and morbid only when it ceases to be frank, and becomes sly and furtive.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Artist and perceiver alike begin with what may be called a total seizure, an inclusive qualitative whole not yet articulated, not distinguished into members.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even at the outset, the total and massive quality has its uniqueness; even when vague and undefined, it is just that which it is and not anything else. If the perception continues, discrimination inevitably sets in. Attention must move, and as it moves, parts, members, emerge from the background. And if attention moves in a unified direction instead of wandering, it is controlled by the pervading qualitative unity; attention is controlled by it because it operates within it.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Coleridge said that every work of art must have about it something not understood to obtain its full effect.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All the cases in which means and ends are external to one another are non-esthetic.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In all ranges of experience, externality of means defines the mechanical.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The color is of the object and the object in all its qualities is expressed through color. For it is objects that glows— gems and sunlight; and it is objects that are splendid— crowns, robes, sunlight. Except as they express objects, through being the significant color-quality of materials of ordinary experience, colors effect only transient excitations.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To look at a work of art in order to see how well certain rules are observed and canons conformed to impoverished perception. But to strive to note the ways in which certain conditions are fulfilled, such as the organic means by which the media is made to express and carry definite parts, or how the problem of adequate individualization is solved, sharpens esthetic perception and enriches its content.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Works of art express space as opportunity for movement and action.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The recurrence of relations—not of elements—in different contexts, which constitutes transposition is qualitative and hence directly experienced in perception.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Position expresses the poised readiness of the live creature to meet the impact of surrounding forces, to meet so as to endure and persist, to extend or expand through undergoing the very forces that, apart from its response, are indifferent and hostile. Through going out into the environment, position unfolds into volume; through the pressure of environment, mass is retracted into energy of position, and space remains, when matter is contracted, as an opportunity for further action.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It cannot be inserted too strongly That what is not immediate is not esthetic.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We cannot grasp any idea, any organ of meditation, we cannot possess it in full force, until we have felt and sensed it, as much so as if it were an odor or a color.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When there is genuine artistry in scientific inquiry and philosophic speculation, a thinker proceeds neither by rule nor yet blindly, but by means of meaning that exist immediately as feelings having qualitative color.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Form may then be defined as the operation of forces that carry the experience of an event, object, scene, and situation to its own integral fulfillment.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are two kinds of means. One kind is external to that which is accomplished; the other kind is taken up into the consequences and remains immanent in them. There are ends which are merely welcome cessations and there are ends that are fulfillments of what went before. The toil of the laborer is too often an antecedent to the wage he receives, as consumption of gasoline is merely a means to transportation. The means cease to act when the “end” is reached; one would be glad, as a rule, to get the result without having to employ the means. They are but the scaffolding.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril and no one can wholly predict what will emerge in its place.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A philosophy has no private store of knowledge or methods for attaining truth, so it has no private access to good. As it accepts knowledge and principles from those competent in science and inquiry, it accepts the goods that are diffused in human experience. It has no Mosaic or Pauline authority of revelation entrusted to it. But it has the authority of intelligence, of criticism of these common and natural goods.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“pp. 407–8; cited in: Hilary Putnam, "Pragmatism and nonscientiﬁc knowledge" (2008) in James Conant, Urszula M. Zeglen, Hilary Putnam: Pragmatism and Realism (2012) p. 21”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As we shall see later, the most important factor in the training of good mental habits consists in acquiring the attitude of suspended conclusion, and in mastering the various methods of searching for new materials to corroborate or to refute the first suggestions that occur. To maintain the state of doubt and to carry on systematic and protracted inquiry ― these are the essentials of thinking.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a familiar and significant saying that a problem well-put is half-solved.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The rise of new science in the seventeenth century laid hold upon general culture in the next century. The enlightenment... testified to the widespread belief that at last light had dawned, that dissipation of ignorance, superstition, and bigotry was at hand, and the triumph of reason was assured -- for reason was counterpart in man of the laws of nature which science was disclosing. The reign of law in the natural world was to be followed by the reign of law in human affairs.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the late eighteenth and the greater part of the nineteenth centuries appeared the first marked cultural shift in the attitude taken toward change. Under the names of indefinite perfectibility, progress, and evolution, the movement of things in the universe itself and of the universe as a whole began to take on a beneficent instead of hateful aspect.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This new philosophy, however, was far from giving the temporal an inherent position and function in the constitution of things. Change was acting on the side of man but only because of fixed laws which governed the changes that take place. There was hope in change just because the laws that govern it do not change.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The intellect is at home in that which is fixed only because it is done and over with, for intellect is itself just as much a deposit of past life as is the matter to which it is congenial. Intuition alone articulates in the forward thrust of life and alone lays hold of reality.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When we come to inanimate elements, the prevailing view has been that time and sequential change are entirely foreign to their nature. According to this view they do not have careers; they simply change their relations is space. We have only to think of the classic conception of atoms. The Newtonian atom, for example, moved and was moved, thus changing its position in space, but it was unchangeable in its own being. ... In itself it was like a God, the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The discovery that mass changes with velocity, a discovery made when minute bodies came under consideration, finally forced surrender of the notion that mass is a fixed and inalienable possession of ultimate elements or individuals, so that time is now considered to be their fourth dimension.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The revolution in scientific ideas just mentioned is primarily logical. It is due to recognition that the very method of physical science, with its primary standard units of mass, space, and time, is concerned with measurements of relations of change, not with individuals as such.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The application of scientific formulations of the principle of probability statistically determined is thus a logical corollary of the principle already stated, that the subject matter of scientific findings is relational, not individual. It is for this reason that it is safe to predict the ultimate triumph of the statistical doctrine.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The utmost possible regarding an individual is a statement as to some order of probability about the future. Heisenberg's principle has been seized upon as a basis for wild statements to the effect that the doctrine of arbitrary free will and totally uncaused activity are now scientifically substantiated. Its actual force and significance is generalization of the idea that the individual is a temporal career whose future cannot logically be deduced from its past.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source