Quote

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

John Dewey

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Mean
Legislation
Policies
Intelligent
Conditions
Policy
Less
Patchwork
Means
Aiming
Matter
Improvisation

More quotes by John Dewey

Image
Man's home is nature his purposes and aims are dependent for execution upon natural conditions. Separated from such conditions they become empty dreams and idle indulgences of fancy.
John Dewey
Image
Science is a systematic means of gaining reliable knowledge.
John Dewey
Image
Not only is social life identical with communication, but all communication (and hence all genuine social life) is educative.
John Dewey
Image
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
Image
Criticism of the commitment of religion to the supernatural is thus positive in import.
John Dewey
Image
We never educate directly, but indirectly by means of the environment. Whether we permit chance environments to do the work, or whether we design environments for the purpose makes a great difference.
John Dewey
Image
Teaching may be compared to selling commodities. No one can sell unless somebody buys.
John Dewey
Image
Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth. In this way, the teacher always is the prophet of the true God and the usherer-in of the true Kingdom of God.
John Dewey
Image
The words environment, medium denote something more than surroundings which encompass an individual. They denote the specific continuity of the surroundings with his own active tendencies.
John Dewey
Image
Intellectually religious emotions are not creative but conservative. They attach themselves readily to the current view of the world and consecrate it.
John Dewey
Image
I do not think that any thorough-going modification of college curriculum would be possible without a modification of the methods of instruction.
John Dewey
Image
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
Image
If the eye is constantly greeted by harmonious objects, having elegance of form and color, a standard of taste naturally grows up.
John Dewey
Image
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
Image
A man can be prevented from breaking into other persons' houses by shutting him up, but shutting him up may not alter his disposition to commit burglary.
John Dewey
Image
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
Image
A democracy is more than a form of government it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.
John Dewey
Image
Perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical fallacies is the notion that a person learns only the particular thing he is studying at the time.
John Dewey
Image
The young of human beings compare so poorly in original efficiency with the young of many of the lower animals, that even the powers needed for physical sustentation have to be acquired under tuition. How much more, then, is this the case with respect to all the technological, artistic, scientific, and moral achievements of humanity!
John Dewey
Image
Cooperation called fraternity in the classic French formula is as much a part of the democratic ideal as is personal initiative. That cultural conditions were allowed to develop (markedly so in the economic phase) which subordinated cooperativeness to liberty and equality serves to explain the decline in the two latter.
John Dewey