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There is not, in fact, any such thing as the direct influence of one human being on another apart from use of the physical environment as an intermediary. A smile, a frown, a rebuke, a word of warning or encouragement, all involve some physical change. Otherwise, the attitude of one would not get over to alter the attitude of another.

John Dewey

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John Dewey
Age: 92 †
Born: 1859
Born: October 20
Died: 1952
Died: June 1
Aesthetician
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Philosopher
Professor
Psychologist
Sociologist
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Trade Unionist
Burlington
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Dewey
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Human
Attitude
Warning
Humans
Environment
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More quotes by 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.
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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.
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.
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Instruction is important.
John Dewey
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Experience, in short, is not a combination of mind and world, subject and object, method and subject matter, but is a single continuous interaction of a great diversity (literally countless in number) of energies.
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In order to have a large number of values in common, all the members of the group must have an equable opportunity, to receive and to take from others. There must be a large variety of shared undertakings and experiences. Otherwise, the influences which educate some into masters, educates others into slaves.
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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.
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Continuity of life means continual readaptation of the environment to the needs of living organisms.
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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.
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If there is one conclusion to which human experience unmistakably points it is that democratic ends demand democratic methods for their realization.
John Dewey
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There is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community, and communication.... Try the experiment of communicating, with fullness and accuracy, some experience to another, especially if it be somewhat complicated, and you will find your own attitude toward your experience changing.
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Thought is impossible without words.
John Dewey
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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
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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.
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How can the child learn to be a free and responsible citizen when the teacher is bound?
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Luck, bad if not good, will always be with us. But it has a way of favoring the intelligent and showing its back to the stupid.
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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 problem is to extract the desirable traits of forms of community life which actually exist, and employ them to criticize undesirable features and suggest improvement
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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.
John Dewey
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If we learn not humility, we learn nothing.
John Dewey