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Human nature exists and operates in an environment. And it is not 'in' that environment as coins are in a box, but as a plant is in the sunlight and soil.

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
Humans
Sunlight
Soil
Boxes
Exists
Plant
Environment
Nature
Operates
Human
Coins

More quotes by John Dewey

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Even in a savage tribe, the achievements of adults are far beyond what the immature members would be capable of if left to themselves. With the growth of civilization, the gap between the original capacities of the immature and the standards and customs of the elders increases.
John Dewey
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The belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative.
John Dewey
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Various epochs of the past have had their own characteristic struggles and interests. Each of these great epochs has left behind itself a kind of cultural deposit, like a geologic stratum. These deposits have found their way into educational institutions in the form of studies, distinct courses of study, distinct types of schools.
John Dewey
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The end justifies the means only when the means used are such as actually bring about the desired and desirable end.
John Dewey
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Every one of the constituent elements of a social group, in a modern city as in a savage tribe, is born immature, helpless, without language, beliefs, ideas, or social standards. Each individual, each unit who is the carrier of the life-experience of his group, in time passes away. Yet the life of the group goes on.
John Dewey
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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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Modern life means democracy, democracy means freeing intelligence for independent effectivenessthe emancipation of mind as an individual organ to do its own work. We naturally associate democracy, to be sure, with freedom of action, but freedom of action without freed capacity of thought behind it is only chaos.
John Dewey
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But the individual butterfly or earthquake remains just the unique existence which it is. We forget in explaining its occurrence that it is only the occurrence that is explained, not the thing itself.
John Dewey
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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.
John Dewey
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All genuine learning comes through experience.
John Dewey
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Without some goals and some efforts to reach it, no man can live.
John Dewey
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The only way to abolish war is to make peace seem heroic.
John Dewey
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Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.
John Dewey
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We cannot set up, out of our heads, something we regard as an ideal society.
John Dewey
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Education as growth or maturity should be an ever-present process.
John Dewey
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The struggle for democracy has to be maintained on as many fronts as culture has aspects: political, economic, international, educational, scientific and artistic, religious.
John Dewey
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Nature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home.
John Dewey
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Each generation is inclined to educate its young so as to get along in the present world instead of with a view to the proper end of education: the promotion of the best possible realization of humanity as humanity. Parents educate their children so that they may get on princes educate their subjects as instruments of their own purpose.
John Dewey
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For one man who thanks God that he is not as other men there are a thousand to offer thanks that they are as other men, sufficiently as others are to escape attention.
John Dewey
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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.
John Dewey