The problem of restoring integration and co-operation between man's beliefs about the world in which he lives and his beliefs about values and purposes that should direct his conduct is the deepest problem modern life. It is the problem of any philosophy that is not isolated from life.
John DeweyWithout the English, reason and philosophy would still be in the most despicable infancy in France.
John DeweyThe only thing that is unqualifiedly given is the total pervasive quality; and the objection to calling it "given" is that the word suggests something to which it is given, mind or thought or consciousness or whatever, as well possibly as something that gives.
John DeweyIt may be said that an education which does not succeed in making poetry a resource in the business of life as well as in its leisure, has something the matter with it.
John DeweyIn undeveloped social groups, we find very little formal teaching and training. Savage groups mainly rely for instilling needed dispositions into the young upon the same sort of association which keeps adults loyal to their group. They have no special devices, material, or institutions for teaching save in connection with initiation ceremonies by which the youth are inducted into full social membership. For the most part, they depend upon children learning the customs of the adults, acquiring their emotional set and stock of ideas, by sharing in what the elders are doing.
John DeweyThe Professor took the old practices and studied them, worked out their mechanical principles and then devised a graded scientific set of tricks, but is based on the elementary laws of mechanics, a study of the equilibrium of the human body, the ways in which it is disturbed, how to recover your own and take advantage of the shifting of the center of gravity of the other person. The first thing that is taught is how to fall down without being hurt, that alone is worth the price of admission and ought to be taught in all our gyms.
John Dewey