82 John Dewey Quotes on Life & Education (REFLECTION)

Top 10 Most Famous John Dewey Quotes (BEST)

Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.

The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better.

We do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience. — We do not **learn** from **experience**, we learn from reflecting on experience.

Art is the most effective mode of communications that exists. — Art is the most **effective** mode of **communications** that exists.

The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning. — The most important **attitude** that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning.

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

All learning begins when our comfortable ideas turn out to be inadequate.

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

All genuine learning comes through experience.

Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril and no one can wholly predict what will emerge in its place.

19 Thought-Provoking John Dewey Quotes

“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

No man's credit is as good as his money. — No man’s credit is as good as his **money**.

Time and memory are true artists; they remold reality nearer to the heart's desire. — **Time** and memory are true artists; they remold reality nearer to the heart’s desire.

“Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates invention. It shocks us out of sheep-like passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving conflict is a sine qua non of reflection and ingenuity.”
John Dewey

Anyone who has begun to think, places some portion of the world in jeopardy.

“The only freedom that is of enduring importance is the freedom of intelligence, that is to say, freedom of observation and of judgment, exercised in behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worth while. The commonest mistake made about freedom is, I think, to identify it with freedom of movement, or, with the external or physical side of activity.”
John Dewey

There's all the difference in the world between having something to say, and having to say something. — There’s all the difference in the world between having something to say, and having to say something.

The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to be important. — The deepest urge in human **nature** is the desire to be important.

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. — 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.

Knowledge falters when imagination clips its wings or fears to use them. — **Knowledge** falters when **imagination** clips its wings or **fears** to use them.

Expertness of taste is at once the result and reward of constant exercise of thinking. — Expertness of taste is at once the result and reward of constant **exercise** of thinking.

Men’s fundamental attitudes toward the world are fixed by the scope and qualities of the activities in which they partake.

Legislation is a matter of more or less intelligent improvisation aiming at palliating conditions by means of patchwork policies.

Always make the other person feel important.

The first step in freeing men from external chains was to emancipate them from the internal chains of false beliefs and ideals.

Creative thinking will improve as we relate the new fact to the old and all facts to each other. — **Creative** thinking will improve as we relate the new fact to the old and all facts to each other.

Art is not the possession of the few who are recognized writers, painters, musicians; it is the authentic expression of any and all individuality. — Art is not the possession of the few who are recognized **writers**, painters, **musicians**; it is the authentic expression of any and all individuality.

12 Wise John Dewey Quotes

“Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situations of experience its own full and unique meaning.”
John Dewey

To me faith means not worrying. — To me faith means not **worrying**.

Nature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home. — Nature is the **mother** and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home.

“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 principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities.”
John Dewey

By object is meant some element in the complex whole that is defined in abstraction from the whole of which it is a distinction.

One lives with so many bad deeds on one's conscience and some good intentions in one's heart. — One lives with so many bad deeds on one’s conscience and some good intentions in one’s heart.

“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 themselves is the reason why traditional education reduced the material of education so largely to a diet of predigested materials.”
John Dewey

Luck, bad if not good, will always be with us. But it has a way of favoring the intelligent and showing its back to the stupid. — **Luck**, bad if not good, will always be with us. But it has a way of favoring the intelligent and showing its back to the stupid.

The only way to abolish war is to make peace seem heroic. — The only way to abolish war is to make **peace** seem heroic.

“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; it refuses to condense into definite form; the attaching of a word somehow (just how, it is almost impossible to say) puts limits around the meaning, draws it out from the void, makes it stand out as an entity on its own account.”
John Dewey

Nature as a whole is a progressive realization of purpose strictly comparable to the realization of purpose in any single plant or animal.

Method means that arrangement of subject matter which makes it most effective in use. Never is method something outside of the material.

17 John Dewey Quotes About Education

“I believe that the community’s duty to education is, therefore, its paramount moral duty. By law and punishment, by social agitation and discussion, society can regulate and form itself in a more or less haphazard and chance way. But through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move.”
John Dewey

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.

Education is not an affair of 'telling' and being told, but an active and constructive process. — Education is not an affair of ‘telling’ and being told, but an active and constructive process.

“I believe that the school is primarily a social institution. 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. I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.”
John Dewey

The real process of education should be the process of learning to think through the application of real problems.

The belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative.

Skepticism the mark and even the pose of the educated mind. — Skepticism: the mark and even the pose of the educated mind.

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

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.

The interaction of knowledge and skills with experience is key to learning.

I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform.

The school must be a genuine form of active community life, instead of a place set apart in which to learn lessons. — The school must be “a genuine form of active community life, instead of a place set apart in which to learn lessons”.

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.

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

Perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical fallacies is the notion that a person learns only the particular thing he is studying at the time. — Perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical fallacies is the notion that a person learns only the particular thing he is **studying** at the time.

Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.

The goal of education is to enable individuals to continue their education.

8 John Dewey Quotes About Teachers

“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

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.

You cannot teach today the same way you did yesterday to prepare students for tomorrow. — You cannot **teach** today the same way you did yesterday to prepare students for tomorrow.

“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

If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.

How can the child learn to be a free and responsible citizen when the teacher is bound — How can the **child** learn to be a free and responsible citizen when the teacher is bound?

“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.”
John Dewey

What's in a question, you ask Everything. It is evoking stimulating response or stultifying inquiry. It is, in essence, the very core of teaching. — What’s in a question, you ask? Everything. It is evoking stimulating response or stultifying inquiry. It is, in essence, the very core of teaching.

2 Motivational John Dewey Quotes for Self-Improvement

The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action. — The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of **action**.

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

2 John Dewey Quotes About Old Beliefs

“Man is not logical and his intellectual history is a record of mental reserves and compromises. He hangs on to what he can in his old beliefs even when he is compelled to surrender their logical basis.”
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.

2 John Dewey Quotes About Problems

We only think when we are confronted with problems.

2 John Dewey Quotes About Science

Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.

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.

8 John Dewey Quotes That Will Make You Think

“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; it refuses to condense into definite form; the attaching of a word somehow (just how, it is almost impossible to say) puts limits around the meaning, draws it out from the void, makes it stand out as an entity on its own account.”
John Dewey