Quotes by John Dewey

“To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.”

“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 goal of education is to enable individuals to continue their education.”

“There is no such thing as educational value in the abstract. The notion that some subjects and methods and that acquaintance with certain facts and truths possess educational value in and of themse...”

“Faith in the possibilities of continued and rigorous inquiry does not limit access to truth to any channel or scheme of things. It does not first say that truth is universal and then add there is b...”

“Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.”

“a problem well put is half solved.”

“Like the soil, mind is fertilized while it lies fallow, until a new burst of bloom ensues.”

“Nothing is more tragic than failure to discover ones true business in life, or to find that one has drifted or been forced by circumstance into an uncongenial calling.”

“I feel the gods are pretty dead, though I suppose I ought to know that however, to be somewhat more philosophical in the matter, if atheism means simply not being a theist, then of course I'm an at...”

“For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an ism becomes so involved in reaction against other isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its princ...”

“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 wou...”

“As we have seen there is some kind of continuity in any case since every experience affects for better or worse the attitudes which help decide the quality of further experiences, by setting up cer...”

“Every one has experienced how learning an appropriate name for what was dim and vague cleared up and crystallized the whole matter. Some meaning seems distinct almost within reach, but is elusive; ...”

“A genuine purpose always starts with an impulse. Obstruction of the immediate execution of an impulse converts it into a desire. Nevertheless neither impulse nor desire is itself a purpose. A purpo...”

“Traditional education tended to ignore the importance of personal impulse and desire as moving springs. But this is no reason why progressive education should identify impulse and desire with purpo...”

“A single course of studies for all progressive schools is out of the question it would mean abandoning the fundamental principle of connection with life-experiences. ”

“Strait-jacket and chain-gang procedures had to be done away with if there was to a chance for growth of individuals in the intellectual springs of freedom without which there is no assurance of gen...”

“We rarely recognize the extent in which our conscious estimates of what is worth while and what is not, are due to standards of which we are not conscious at all. But in general it may be said that...”

“Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes, of likes and dislikes, may be and often is much more important than the spelling lesson or lesson in geography or history that is ...”