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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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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
Meaning
Mean
Things
Blindly
Unconsciously
Propose
Intend

More quotes by John Dewey

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I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform.
John Dewey
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What holds for adults holds even more for children, sensitive and conscious of differences. I certainly hope that the Board of Education will think very, very seriously before it introduces this division and antagonism in our public schools.
John Dewey
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Legislation is a matter of more or less intelligent improvisation aiming at palliating conditions by means of patchwork policies.
John Dewey
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I believe that 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
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To the being of fully alive, the future is not ominous but a promise it surrounds the present like a halo.
John Dewey
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The intimation never wholly deserts us that there is, in the unformed activities of childhood and youth, the possibilities of a better life for the community as well as for individuals here and there. This dim sense is the ground of our abiding idealization of childhood.
John Dewey
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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.
John Dewey
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The outstanding problem of the Public is discovery and identification of itself
John Dewey
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The premium so often put in schools upon external discipline, and upon marks and rewards, upon promotion and keeping back, are the obverse of the lack of attention given to life situations in which the meaning of facts, ideas, principles, and problems is vitally brought home.
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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The interaction of knowledge and skills with experience is key to learning.
John Dewey
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The reactionaries are in possession of force, in not only the army and police, but in the press and the schools
John Dewey
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Art is not the possession of the few who are recognized writers, painters, musicians it is the authentic expression of any and all individuality.
John Dewey
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What's in a question, you ask? Everything. It is evoking stimulating response or stultifying inquiry. It is, in essence, the very core of teaching.
John Dewey
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Just as a flower which seems beautiful and has color but no perfume, so are the fruitless words of the man who speaks them but does them not.
John Dewey
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Intelligence is in constant process of forming, and its retention requires constant alertness in observing consequences, an open-minded will to learn, and courage in readjustment.
John Dewey
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Etymologically, the word education means just a process of leading or bringing up.
John Dewey
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There is no such thing as educational value in the abstract. The notion that some subjects and methods and that acquaintance with certain facts and truths possess educational value in and of themselves is the reason why traditional education reduced the material of education so largely to a diet of predigested materials.
John Dewey
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Thinking and feeling that have to do with action in association with others is as much a social mode of behavior as is the most overt cooperative or hostile act.
John Dewey
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Talk of democracy has little content when big business rules the life of the country through its control of the means of production, exchange, the press and other means of publicity, propaganda and communication.
John Dewey