Quote

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

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John Dewey
Age: 92 †
Born: 1859
Born: October 20
Died: 1952
Died: June 1
Aesthetician
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Professor
Psychologist
Sociologist
Teacher
Trade Unionist
Burlington
Vermont
Dewey
Thought
Sets
Gadflies
Like
Shock
Sine
Observation
Noting
Invention
Shocks
Reflection
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Memory
Passivity
Conflict
Ingenuity
Memories
Sheep
Contriving

More quotes by John Dewey

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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.
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If we learn not humility, we learn nothing.
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Education as growth or maturity should be an ever-present process.
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If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.
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All direction is but re-direction it shifts the activities already going on into another channel. Unless one is cognizant of the energies which are already in operation, one's attempts at direction will almost surely go amiss.
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By doing his share in the associated activity, the individual appropriates the purpose which actuates it, becomes familiar with its methods and subject matters, acquires needed skill, and is saturated with its emotional spirit.
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Society exists through a process of transmission quite as much as biological life. This transmission occurs by means of communication of habits of doing, thinking, and feeling from the older to the younger.
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No man's credit is as good as his money.
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Not perfection as a final goal, but the ever-enduring process of perfecting, maturing, refining is the aim of living.
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All education which develops power to share effectively in social life is moral.
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Forty years spent in wandering in a wilderness like that of the present is not a sad fate - unless one attempts to make himself believe that the wilderness is after all itself the promised land.
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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.
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If the members who compose a society lived on continuously, they might educate the new-born members, but it would be a task directed by personal interest rather than social need. Now it is a work of necessity.
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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.
John Dewey
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There is no common understanding, and no community life. But in a shared activity, each person refers what he is doing to what the other is doing and vice-versa.
John Dewey
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While every social arrangement is educative in effect, the educative effect first becomes an important part of the purpose of the association in connection with the association of the older with the younger.
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Education has no more serious responsibility than the making of adequate provision for enjoyment of recreative leisure not only for the sake of immediate health, but for the sake of its lasting effect upon the habits of the mind.
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In brief, the function of knowledge is to make one experience freely available to other experiences.
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When things have a meaning for us, we mean (intend, propose) what we do: when they do not, we act blindly, unconsciously, unintelligently.
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The devotion of democracy to education is a familiar fact. . . . [A] government resting upon popular suffrage cannot be successful unless those who elect . . . their governors are educated.
John Dewey