Quote

The bare fact that language consists of sounds which are mutually intelligible is enough of itself to show that its meaning depends upon connection with a shared experience.

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
Shows
Depends
Mutually
Enough
Upon
Bare
Sound
Shared
Show
Consists
Fact
Connection
Language
Sounds
Experience
Connections
Facts
Meaning
Intelligible

More quotes by John Dewey

Image
If we learn not humility, we learn nothing.
John Dewey
Image
Not only does social life demand teaching and learning for its own permanence, but the very process of living together educates. It enlarges and enlightens experience it stimulates and enriches imagination it creates responsibility for accuracy and vividness of statement and thought.
John Dewey
Image
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
Image
Education is not preparation for life education is life itself.
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
Language fails not because thought fails, but because no verbal symbols can do justice to the fullness and richness of thought. Ifwe are to continue talking about data in any other sense than as reflective distinctions, the original datum is always such a qualitative whole.
John Dewey
Image
Things gain meaning by being used in a shared experience or joint action.
John Dewey
Image
A response is not just a re-action, a protest, as it were, against being disturbed it is, as the word indicates, an answer. It meets the stimulus, and corresponds with it.
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
The good society was, like the good self, a diverse yet harmonious, growing yet unified whole, a fully participatory democracy in which the powers and capacities of the individuals that comprised it were harmonized by their cooperative activities into a community that permitted the full and free expression of individuality.
John Dewey
Image
All education which develops power to share effectively in social life is moral.
John Dewey
Image
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
Image
Of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful.
John Dewey
Image
To avoid a split between what men consciously know because they are aware of having learned it by a specific job of learning, and what they unconsciously know because they have absorbed it in the formation of their characters by intercourse with others, becomes an increasingly delicate task with every development of special schooling.
John Dewey
Image
Like the soil, mind is fertilized while it lies fallow, until a new burst of bloom ensues.
John Dewey
Image
Education is not an affair of 'telling' and being told, but an active and constructive process.
John Dewey
Image
Continuity of life means continual readaptation of the environment to the needs of living organisms.
John Dewey
Image
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
Image
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.
John Dewey
Image
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