Any genuine teaching will result, if successful, in someone's knowing how to bring about a better condition of things than existed earlier.

Our historic imagination is at best slightly developed. We generalise and idealise the past egregiously. We set up little toys to stand as symbols for centuries and the complicated lives of countless individuals.

Since a democratic society repudiates the principle of external authority, it must find a substitute in voluntary disposition and interest; these can be created only by education.

The good society was, like the good self, a diverse yet harmonious, growing yet unified whole, a fully participatory democracy in which the powers and capacities of the individuals that comprised it were harmonized by their cooperative activities into a community that permitted the full and free expression of individuality.

It is obvious to any observer that in every western country the increase of importance of public schools has been at least coincident with the relaxation of older family ties.

Social engaged intellectuals must accept reality as they found it and shape it toward positive social goals, not stand aside in self-righteous isolation.

Within even the most social group there are many relations that are not as yet social.