John Dewey Quotes

"As we shall see later, the most important factor in the training of good mental habits consists in acquiring the attitude of suspended conclusion, and in mastering the various methods of searching for new materials to corroborate or to refute the first suggestions that occur. To maintain the state of doubt and to carry on systematic and protracted inquiry ― these are the essentials of thinking.".

p. 407–8 cited in: Hilary Putnam (2008) "Pragmatism and nonscientific knowledge" James Conant, Urszula M. Zeglen (2012) Hilary Putnam: Pragmatism and Realism. p. 21

A philosophy has no private store of knowledge or methods for attaining truth, so it has no private access to good. As it accepts knowledge and principles from those competent in science and inquiry, it accepts the goods that are diffused in human experience. It has no Mosaic or Pauline authority of revelation entrusted to it. But it has the authority of intelligence, of criticism of these common and natural goods.

This intelligence-testing business reminds me of the way they used to weigh hogs in Texas. They would get a long plank, put it over a cross-bar, and somehow tie the hog on one end of the plank. They'd search all around till they found a stone that would balance the weight of the hog and they'd put that on the other end of the plank. Then they'd guess the weight of the stone.

Democracy means the belief that humanistic culture should prevail.

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

As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.

Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril and no one can wholly predict what will emerge in its place.

While they denounce as subversive anarchy signs of independent thought, of thinking for themselves on the part of others lest such thought disturb the conditions by which they profit, they think quite literally for themselves, that is of themselves.

It is no accident that all democracies have put a high estimate upon education; that schooling has been their first care and enduring charge. Only through education can equality of opportunity be anything more than a phrase. Accidental inequalities of birth, wealth, and learning are always tending to restrict the opportunities of some as compared with those of others. Only free and continued education can counteract those forces which are always at work to restore, in however changed a form, feudal oligarchy. Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.

We have to a considerable extent, given up thinking of this life as merely a preparation for another life. Very largely, however, we think of some parts of this life as merely preparatory to other later stages of it. It is so very largely as to the process of education; and if I were asked to name the most needed of all reforms in the spirit of education, I should say: 'Cease conceiving of education as mere preparation for later life, and make it the full meaning of the present life.' And to add that only in this case does it become truly a preparation for after life is not the paradox it seems. An activity which does not have worth enough to be carried on for its own sake cannot be very effective as a preparation for something else. By making the present activity the expression of the full meaning of the case, that activity is, indeed, an end in itself, not a mere means to something beyond itself; but, in being a totality, it is also the condition of all future integral action. It forms the habit of requiring that every act be an outlet of the whole self, and it provides the instruments of such complete functioning.

Durup düşünmek” olarak tabir ettiğimiz davranış aslında çok doğru bir psikolojik yöntemdir. Çünkü düşünmek aynı zamanda, güdünün ilk ortaya çıktığı şeklinin, bu güdünün daha geniş kapsamlı ve daha tutarlı bir faaliyet planı oluşturmak için bulunması muhtemel diğer faaliyete geçme eğilimleri ile ilişki kurmasından önce durdurulması demektir. Bu diğer faaliyete geçme eğilimlerinin bazıları, nesnel koşulları gözlemlemek için gözün, kulağın ve elin kullanılmasına yol açar; bazıları da geçmişte olan şeylerin hatrlanması ile sonuçlanır. Bu nedenle, düşünme, bir yandan gözlem ve hatıranın bütünleştirilmesi ile, ki bu bütünleşme düşünmenin kalbidir, güdünün içten denetimini sağlarken, diğer yandan da alelacele yapılacak bir hareketin geciktirilmesi etkisini yapar.

To see the organism in nature, the nervous system in the organism, the brain in the nervous system, the cortex in the brain is the answer to the problems which haunt philosophy. And when thus seen they will be seen to be in, not as marbles are in a box but as events are in history, in a moving, growing never finished process.

Zıt yönde bir aşırılığa gidilerek, mevcut koşullar altında her ne kadar doğal görünse de yine de talihsiz olan bir şekilde, eğitimin kullanacağı materyali şimdideki deneyimden seçmesi ve öğrencinin şimdinin ve geleceğin sorunları ile baş edebilmesini sağlaması biçimindeki geçerli düşünce, çoğu zaman ilerlemeci anlayışa sahip okulların geçmişi büyük ölçüde yok sayabileceği düşüncesine dönüştürülmüştür. Eğer şimdi, geçmişten koparılabilecek olsaydı bu çıkarım geçerli olurdu. Ancak şimdiyi anlamakta kullanılabilecek tek yol geçmişin başarılarıdır. Tıpkı bireyin kendisini içerisinde bulduğu koşulları anlamak için belleğine yönelmek zorunda olması gibi, şimdideki toplumsal yaşamın sorunları geçmişle o kadar yakın ve doğrudan bir ilişki içerisindedir ki; öğrenciler bu sorunların geçmişte yatan kökenlerini incelemeden ne bu sorunları anlayabilirler ne de en iyi çözüm yollarını bulabilirler. Başka bir deyişle, öğrenmenin amaçlarının gelecekte ve kullanması gereken materyalin de şimdide olduğu şeklindeki geçerli prensip, ancak ve ancak şimdideki deneyimin geriye doğru genişletilebildiği oranda hayata geçirilebilir. Deneyim, geleceğe doğru ancak geçmişe doğru da genişlediği sürece genişleyebilir.

Let us admit the case of the conservative: If we once start thinking, no one can guarantee what will be the outcome, except that many objects, ends, and institutions will be surely doomed. Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril, and no one can wholly predict what will emerge in its place.