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Liberty is not just an idea, an abstract principle. It is power, effective power to do specific things. There is no such thing as liberty in general liberty, so to speak, at large.

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
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Principle
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More quotes by John Dewey

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Anyone who has begun to think, places some portion of the world in jeopardy.
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Continuity of life means continual readaptation of the environment to the needs of living organisms.
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To savages it would seem preposterous to seek out a place where nothing but learning was going on in order that one might learn.
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The activity of the immature human being is simply played upon to secure habits which are useful. He is trained like an animal rather than educated like a human being. His instincts remain attached to their original objects of pain or pleasure. But to get happiness or to avoid the pain of failure he has to act in a way agreeable to others.
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Without initiation into the scientific spirit one is not in possession of the best tools which humanity has so far devised for effectively directed reflection. One in that case not merely conducts inquiry and learning without the use of the best instruments, but fails to understand the full meaning of knowledge.
John Dewey
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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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Independent self-reliant people would be a counterproductive anachronism in the collective society of the future where people will be defined by their associations.
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Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.
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Instruction is important.
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Modern philosophy certainly exacts a surrender of all supernaturalism and fixed dogma and rigid institutionalism with which Christianity has been historically associated
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Vocational training is the training of animals or slaves. It fits them to become cogs in the industrial machine. Free men need liberal education to prepare them to make a good use of their freedom.
John Dewey
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As a matter of fact, a modern society is many societies more or less loosely connected. Each household with its immediate extension of friends makes a society the village or street group of playmates is a community each business group, each club, is another.
John Dewey
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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
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Even dogs and horses have their actions modified by association with human beings they form different habits because human beings are concerned with what they do.
John Dewey
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No system has ever as yet existed which did not in some form involve the exploitation of some human beings for the advantage of others.
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As a society becomes more enlightened, it realizes that it is responsible not to transmit and conserve the whole of its existing achievements, but only such as make for a better future society. The school is its chief agency for the accomplishment of this end.
John Dewey
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The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning.
John Dewey
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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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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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Doctrine that eliminates or even obscures the function of choice of values and enlistment of desires and emotions in behalf of those chosen weakens personal responsibility for judgment and for action. It thus helps create the attitudes that welcome and support the totalitarian state.
John Dewey