Tao Te Ching
John Dewey
1859 – 1952 CE
The "Second Confucius"
American philosopher, psychologist, one of the original 34 signatories of the first Humanist Manifesto, major voice for progressive education and academic freedom; Dewey is considered the “epitome of liberalism,” “one of the fathers of functional psychology,” leading proponent of hands-on learning, and a powerful advocate for democracy. Writing 40 books and over 700 articles in 140 journals, he helped establish the NAACP, supported immigrants, and the women’s suffrage movement. He worked closely with Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Karl Jaspers, Henri Bergson, Martin Buber, and George Santayana; established a college where the faculty included Buckminster Fuller, Paul Goodman, and the Beat Generation "Black Mountain Poets.” One of his students, B.R. Ambedkar, became one of the founding fathers of independent India. President of the League for Industrial Democracy, he refuted the influential Walter Lippmann views on the need to manipulate democracy by using journalism as propaganda. He lived in China during 1919-1922 giving nearly 200 lectures to thousands Chinese audiences who described him as "Second Confucius.” Returning, he gave lectures in the USA discussing the teachings of Laozi.
Lineages
American (USA) Humanism Scientists
Eras
Western
Post-Romantic Age (1850 – 2018 CE)Gilded Age (1860 – 1900 CE)
Great Depression (1929 – 1941 CE)
Victorian (1837 – 1901 CE)
Roaring Twenties (1920 – 1929 CE)
Chinese
Qing dynasty (1644 – 1912 CE)Unlisted Sources
Creative Intelligence, 1917
Psychology and Social Science
Reconstruction in Philosophy, 1920
The Influence of Darwin on Philosoply, 1910
Quotes by John Dewey (28 quotes)
“Democracy and the one, ultimate, ethical ideal of humanity are to my mind synonymous.”
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“The thing needful is improvement of education, not simply by turning out teachers who can do better the things that are not necessary to do, but rather by changing the conception of what constitutes education.”
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“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.”
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“To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.”
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“Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.”
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“The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.”
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“Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.”
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“The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better.”
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“The business of the teacher is to produce a higher standard of intelligence in the community, and the object of the public school system is to make as large as possible the number of those who possess this intelligence.”
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“Art is the most effective mode of communications that exists.”
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“The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troublesome work to undertake the alteration of old beliefs.”
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“The only way to abolish war is to make peace seem heroic.”
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“Conflict stirs us to observation and memory, instigates invention, shocks us out of sheep-like passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving…conflict is a sine qua non of reflection and ingenuity.”
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“there is some kind of continuity in any case since every experience affects for better or worse the attitudes which help decide the quality of further experiences”
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“Anyone who has begun to think, places some portion of the world in jeopardy.”
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“The ultimate function of literature is to appreciate the world, sometimes indignantly, sometimes sorrowfully, but best of all to praise”
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“As long as politics is the shadow of big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.”
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“The democratic faith in human equality is belief that every human being, independent of the quantity or range of his personal endowment, has the right to equal opportunity with every other person for development of whatever gifts he has.”
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“Have not some religions, including the most influential forms of Christianity, taught that the heart of man is totally corrupt? [For this reason] how could the course of religion in its entire sweep not be marked by practices that are shameful in their cruelty and lustfulness, and by beliefs that are degraded and intellectually incredible?”
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“As I read Plato, philosoply began with some sense of its essentially political basis and mission—a recognition that its problems were those of the organization of a just social order. But it soon got lost in dreams of another world.”
from The Influence of Darwin on Philosoply, 1910
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“The task of philosophy is to clarify our ideas about contemporary social and moral conflicts. It's purpose is to become—as far as humanly possible—an organ for dealing with these conflicts... Philosophy is a catholic and far-sighted theory about our adjustments to the conflicting factors of life.”
from Creative Intelligence, 1917
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“Internationalism is not an aspiration but a fact, not a sentimental ideal but a force...[though] thrown out of gear by the traditional doctrine of exclusive national sovereignty... an international mind alone agrees with the moving forces of present-day labor, commerce, science, art, and religion”
from Reconstruction in Philosophy, 1920
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“The more we multiply means, the less certain and general is the use we are able to make of them... the entire problem is one of the development of science and its application to life”
from Psychology and Social Science
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“The purpose of life is not perfection as a final goal, but the ever-enduring process of perfecting, maturing, refining…”
from Psychology and Social Science
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“The bad man is the man who—no matter how good he has been—begins to deteriorate, to grow less good. The good man is the one who—no matter how morally unworthy he has been—is moving to become better. Such a conception makes one severe in judging himself, and humane in judging others.”
from Reconstruction in Philosophy, 1920
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“[Darwin] introduced a mode of thinking that in the end was bound to transform the logic of knowledge and hence the treatment of morals, politics, and religion.”
from The Influence of Darwin on Philosoply, 1910
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Quotes about John Dewey (1 quotes)
“Dewey wrote the philosophy—as Whitman wrote the poetry—not of one English state, but of the continent... he rejects metaphysics as the echo and disguise of theology [and] what distinguishes him is the undisguised completeness with which he accepts the evolution theory... All progressive teachers acknowledge his leadership; and there is hardly a school in America that has not felt his influence.”
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