If there is one conclusion to which human experience unmistakably points it is that democratic ends demand democratic methods for their realization.
John DeweyThere is no common understanding, and no community life. But in a shared activity, each person refers what he is doing to what the other is doing and vice-versa.
John DeweyThe demand for liberty is a demand for power, either for possession of powers of action not already possessed or for retention and expansion of powers already possessed.
John DeweyAs believers in democracy we have not only the right but the duty to question existing mechanisms of, say, suffrage and to inquire whether some functional organization would not serve to formulate and manifest public opinion better than the existing methods. It is not irrelevant to the point that a score of passages could be cited in which Jefferson refers to the American Government as an experiment.
John Dewey