01UndatedThe most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning.John Dewey / quote ↗
02UndatedAs long as politics is the shadow of big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.John Dewey / quote ↗
03UndatedWhen the organization called soul is free, moving and operative, initial as well as terminal, it is spirit. Qualities are both static, substantial, and transitive. Spirit quickens; it is not only alive, but spirit gives life. Animals are spirited, but man is a living spirit. He lives in his works and his works do follow him. Soul is form, spirit informs. It is the moving function of that of which soul is the substance. Perhaps the words soul and spirit are so heavily laden with traditional mythology and sophisticated doctrine that they must be surrendered; it may be impossible to recover for them in science and philosophy the realities designated in idiomatic speech. But the realities are there, by whatever names they be called.John Dewey / quote ↗
04UndatedWe do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience.John Dewey / quote ↗
07UndatedEvery art communicates because it expresses. It enables us to share vividly and deeply in meanings… For communication is not announcing things… Communication is the process of creating participation, of making common what had been isolated and singular… the conveyance of meaning gives body and definiteness to the experience of the one who utters as well as to that of those who listen.John Dewey / quote ↗
08UndatedThe two limits of every unit of thinking are a perplexed, troubled, or confused situation at the beginning, and a cleared up, unified, resolved situation at the close.John Dewey / quote ↗
09UndatedWhile the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows.John Dewey / quote ↗
10Undated. . . have not some religions, including the most influential forms of Christianity, taught that the heart of man is totally corrupt? How could the course of religion in its entire sweep not be marked by practices that are shameful in their cruelty and lustfulness, and by beliefs that are degraded and intellectually incredible? What else than what we can find could be expected, in the case of people having little knowledge and no secure method of knowing; with primitive institutions, and with so little control of natural forces that they lived in a constant state of fear?John Dewey / quote ↗
11UndatedLife itself consists of phases in which the organism falls out of step with the march of surrounding things and then recovers unison with it—either through effort or by some happy chance. And, in a growing life, the recovery is never mere return to a prior state, for it is enriched by the state of disparity and resistance through which it has successfully passed. If the gap between organism and environment is too wide, the creature dies. If its activity is not enhanced by the temporary alienation, it merely subsists. Life grows when a temporary falling out is a transition to a more extensive balance of the energies of the organism with those of the conditions under which it lives.John Dewey / quote ↗
15UndatedSince changes are going on anyway the great thing is to learn enough about them so that we will be able to lay hold of them and turn them in the direction of our desires. Condi-tions and events are neither to be fled from nor passively acquiesced in they are to be utilized and directed.John Dewey / quote ↗
17UndatedTo the being of fully alive the future is not ominous but a promise it surrounds the present like a halo.John Dewey / quote ↗
18UndatedNature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home.John Dewey / quote ↗
19UndatedSuch happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situations of experience its own full and unique meaning.John Dewey / quote ↗
20UndatedTime and memory are true artists they remould reality nearer to the heart's desire.John Dewey / quote ↗
21UndatedMan is not logical and his intellectual history is a record of mental reserves and compromises. He hangs on to what he can in his old beliefs even when he is compelled to surrender their logical basis.John Dewey / quote ↗
22UndatedThe belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative.John Dewey / quote ↗
24UndatedEducation, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.John Dewey / quote ↗
Edsverb reading card◎MeditationsMarcus AureliusFree edition · US public domainMeric Casaubon translation (1634), later edited editionRelated reading on mind; this is an editorial connection, not the source of the saying.About this book ↗
Edsverb reading card道Tao Te ChingLaozi (traditional attribution)Free edition · US public domainJames Legge translation; publication year not supplied in the linked digitized textRelated reading on nature; this is an editorial connection, not the source of the saying.About this book ↗
Edsverb reading card☼The ProphetKahlil GibranFree edition · US public domain1923 English editionRelated reading on life; this is an editorial connection, not the source of the saying.About this book ↗