- The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous
formation through choice of action.
The most
notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former
maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its
resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains
outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered. While the living thing may
easily be crushed by a superior force, it none the less tries to turn the
energies which act upon it into means of its own further existences... It
is the very nature of life to strive to continue in being. Since this
continuance can be secured only by constant renewals, life is a
self-renewing process. What nutrition and reproduction are to physiological
life, education is to social life.
Confidence is directness and courage in meeting the facts of life.
To me faith means not
worrying.
Time and memory are true
artists; they remold reality nearer to the heart's desire.
Anyone
who has begun to think, places some portion of the world in jeopardy.
By
reading the characteristic features of any man's castles in the air
you can make a shrewd guess as to his underlying desires which are
frustrated.
Complete adaptation to environment means death. The essential point in
all response is the desire to control environment.
Conflict is the gadfly of
thought. It stirs us to observation and
memory. It instigates to invention. It shocks us out of sheep-like
passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving. Not that it always
effects this result; but that conflict is a 'sine qua non' of
reflection and ingenuity.
- "Morals Are Human," Dewey: Middle Works, Vol.14, p. 207
also see
DEWEY-L archive posting by Richard Hake (2005)
Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is, not
a preparation for life; education is life itself.
Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.
Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as
much from his failures as from his successes.
Genuine ignorance is profitable because it is likely to be accompanied
by humility, curiosity, and open mindedness; whereas ability to repeat
catch-phrases, cant terms, familiar propositions, gives the conceit of
learning and coats the mind with varnish waterproof to new ideas.
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.
We can have facts without
thinking but we cannot have thinking without facts.
Man 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.
No
man's credit is as good as his money.
One
lives with so many bad deeds on one's conscience and some good
intentions in one's heart.
Skepticism: the mark and even the pose of the educated mind.
Such
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.
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.
To
find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do
it, is the key to happiness.
Without some goals and some efforts to reach it, no man can live.
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