24 November 2019

John Dewey - Collected Quotes

"It [science] involves an intelligent and persistent endeavor to revise current beliefs so as to weed out what is erroneous, to add to their accuracy, and, above all, to give them such shape that the dependencies of the various facts upon one another may be as obvious as possible." (John Dewey, "Democracy and Education", 1916)

"The way to enable a student to apprehend the instrumental value of arithmetic is not to lecture him on the benefit it will be to him in some remote and uncertain future, but to let him discover that success in something he is interested in doing depends on ability to use numbers." (John Dewey, "Democracy and Education", 1916)

"Thinking is the accurate and deliberate instituting of connections between what is done and its consequences." (John Dewey, "Democracy and Education", 1916)

"Reason is experimental intelligence, conceived after the pattern of science, and used in the creation of social arts; it has something to do. It liberates man from the bondage of the past, due to ignorance and accident hardened into custom. It projects a better future and assists man in its realization. And its operation is always subject to test in experience. […] The principles which man projects as guides […] are not dogmas. They are hypotheses to be worked out in practice, and to be rejected, corrected and expanded as they fail or succeed in giving our present experience the guidance it requires. We may call them programmes of action, but since they are to be used in making our future acts less blind, more directed, they are flexible. Intelligence is not something possessed once for all. It is in constant process of forming, and its retention requires constant alertness in observing consequences, an open-minded will to learn and courage in re-adjustment." (John Dewey, "Reconstruction in Philosophy", 1920)

"Scientific principles and laws do not lie on the surface of nature. They are hidden, and must be wrested from nature by an active and elaborate technique of inquiry." (John Dewey, "Reconstruction in Philosophy", 1920) 

"The first distinguishing characteristic of thinking is facing the facts - inquiry, minute and extensive scrutinizing, observation." (John Dewey, "Reconstruction in Philosophy", 1920)

"Factual science may collect statistics, and make charts. But its predictions are, as has been well said, but past history reversed." (John Dewey, "Art as Experience", 1934)

"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, "Time and Individuality", 1940)

"A problem well-defined is a problem half solved." (John Dewey)

"Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself." (John Dewey)

"The truth is that which works." (John Dewey)

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