Dewey Cox Quotes & Sayings

Education Proceeds ultimately from the patterns furnished by institutions, customs, and laws"- If the patterns of institutions, customs, and laws are broken for this philosophy education should fix itself. There should be several different things taught instead of one "Supreme Factor. — John Dewey

I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn't think anything of what he had done to the city's name. Later I heard men who could manage their r's give it the same pronunciation. I still didn't see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves' word for dictionary. A few years later I went to Personville and learned better. — Dashiell Hammett

As believers in democracy we have not only the right but the duty to question existing mechanisms of, say, suffrage and to inquire whether some functional organization would not serve to formulate and manifest public opinion better than the existing methods. It is not irrelevant to the point that a score of passages could be cited in which Jefferson refers to the American Government as an experiment. — John Dewey

Plato defined a slave as one who accepts from another the purposes which control his conduct. This condition obtains even where there is no slavery in the legal sense. It is found wherever men are engaged in activity which is socially serviceable, but whose service they do not understand and have no personal interest in. — John Dewey

The theory of the method of knowing which is advanced in these pages may be termed pragmatic ... Only that which has been organized into our disposition so as to enable us to adapt the environment to our needs and adapt our aims and desires to the situation in which we live is really knowledge. — John Dewey

We are all students. We are all teachers. — Dewey Dempsey

The eternal conflict of good and the best with bad and the worst is on. — Melvil Dewey

But progress in knowledge has made us aware of the superficiality of Plato's lumping of individuals and their original powers into a few sharply marked-off classes; it has taught us that original capacities are indefinitely numerous and variable. It is but the other side of this fact to say that in the degree in which society has become democratic, social organization means utilization of the specific and variable qualities of individuals, not stratification by classes. — John Dewey

Teaching may be compared to selling commodities. No one can sell unless somebody buys. — John Dewey

Men have never fully used [their] powers to advance the good in life, because they have waited upon some power external to themselves and to nature to do the work they are responsible for doing. — John Dewey

The librarian was explaining the benefits of the Dewey decimal system to her junior - benefits that extended to every area of life. It was orderly, like the universe. It had logic. It was dependable. Using it allowed a kind of moral uplift, as one's own chaos was also brought under control.
'Whenever I am troubled,' said the librarian, 'I think about the Dewey decimal system.'
'Then what happens?' asked the junior, rather overawed.
'Then I understand that trouble is just something that has been filed in the wrong place. That is what Jung was explaining of course - as the chaos of our unconscious contents strive to find their rightful place in the index of consciousness. — Jeanette Winterson

The future of our civilisation depends upon the widening spread and deepening hold of the scientific habit of mind. — John Dewey

The ultimate aim of production is not production of goods but the production of free human beings associated with one another on terms of equality. — John Dewey

I don't know what your Company is feeling as of today about the work of Dr. Alice Hamilton on benzol [benzene] poisoning. I know that back in the old days some of your boys used to think that she was a plain nuisance and just picking on you for luck. But I have a hunch that as you have learned more about the subject, men like your good self have grown to realize the debt that society owes her for her crusade. I am pretty sure that she has saved the lives of a great many girls in can-making plants and I would hate to think that you didn't agree with me. — Bradley Dewey

Schools have ignored the value of experience and chosen to teach by pouring in. — John Dewey

It is [the teacher's] business to be on the alert to see what attitudes and habitual tendencies are being created. In this direction he[sic] must, if he is an educator, be able to judge what attitudes are actually conducive to continued growth and what are detrimental. He must, in addition, have that sympathetic understanding of individuals as individuals which gives him an idea of what is actually going on in the minds of those who are learning. — John Dewey

The way our group or class does things tends to determine the proper objects of attention, and thus to prescribe the directions and limits of observation and memory. What is strange or foreign (that is to say outside the activities of the groups) tends to be morally forbidden and intellectually suspect. — John Dewey

Since changes are going on anyway, the great thing is to learn enough about them so that we will be able to lay hold of them and turn them in the direction of our desires. Conditions and events are neither to be fled from nor passively acquiesced in; they are to be utilized and directed. — John Dewey

The teacher loses the position of external boss or dictator but takes on that of leader of group activities — John Dewey

You bring any cannoli?' Mickey whispered, trying to downplay his worry with humor.
'No, but I'm keeping my gun no matter what he says. — Genevieve Dewey

Every serious-minded person knows that a large part of the effort required in moral discipline consists in the courage needed to acknowledge the unpleasant consequences of one's past and present acts. — John Dewey

The ideal may seem remote of execution, but the democratic ideal of education is a farcical yet tragic delusion except as the ideal more and more dominates our public system of education. — John Dewey

Education is a social process; education is growth; education is not preparation for life but is life itself. — John Dewey

Since growth is the characteristic of life, education is all one with growing; it has no end beyond itself. The criterion of the value of school education is the extent in which it creates a desire for continuous growth and supplies means for making the desire effective in fact. — John Dewey

The intermingling in the school of youth of different races, differing religions, and unlike customs creates for all a new and broader environment. Common subject matter accustoms all to a unity of outlook upon a broader horizon than is visible to the members of any group while it is isolated. The assimilative force of the American public school is eloquent testimony to the efficacy of the common and balanced appeal. — John Dewey

For Dewey, the Great Community was the basic fact of history. The individual and the soul were invalid concepts, man was truly man, not as an individual, but as after Aristotle, in society and supremely in the State. Thus, for Dewey, true education mean not the development of the individual in terms of learning, but his socialization.
Progressive education ... educates the individual in terms of particular facts of the universe without reference to God, truth, or morality. — Rousas John Rushdoony

Without some goals and some efforts to reach it, no man can live. — John Dewey

wonder is the mother of all science. — John Dewey

Just one word, infused with naked desperation; half prayer, half enchantment. It felt like a freezing charm on her soul making her his prisoner, yet setting her free all at once. — Genevieve Dewey

The educational process has no end beyond itself; it is its own end. — John Dewey