The central problem of an education based upon experience is to select the kind of present experience that live fruitfully and creatively in subsequent experiences.

I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform.

But the individual butterfly or earthquake remains just the unique existence which it is. We forget in explaining its occurrence that it is only the occurrence that is explained, not the thing itself.

I do not think that any thorough-going modification of college curriculum would be possible without a modification of the methods of instruction.

Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates invention. It shocks us out of sheep-like passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving…conflict is a sine qua non of reflection and ingenuity.

Of what use, educationally speaking, is it to be able to see the end in the beginning?

When "reality" is sought for at large, it is without intellectual import; at most the term carries the connotation of an agreeableemotional state.