John Dewey Thinking Quotations

We can have facts without thinking but we cannot have thinking without facts.

Such words as "society" and "community" are likely to be misleading, for they have a tendency to make us think there is a single thing corresponding to the single word.

Creative thinking will improve as we relate the new fact to the old and all facts to each other.

Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.

The phrase "think for one's self" is a pleonasm. Unless one does it for one's self, it isn't thinking.

The origin of thinking is some perplexity, confusion or doubt.

One can think effectively only when one is willing to endure suspense and to undergo the trouble of searching.

We sometimes talk as if "original research" were a peculiar prerogative of scientists or at least of advanced students. But all thinking is research, and all research is native, original, with him who carries it on, even if everybody else in the world already is sure of what he is still looking for.

When men think and believe in one set of symbols and act in ways which are contrary to their professed and conscious ideas, confusion and insincerity are bound to result.

The routine of custom tends to deaden even scientific inquiry; it stands in the way of discovery and of the active scientific worker. For discovery and inquiry are synonymous as an occupation. Science is a pursuit, not a coming into possession of the immutable; new theories as points of view are more prized than discoveries that quantitatively increase the store on hand.

Thinking and feeling that have to do with action in association with others is as much a social mode of behavior as is the most overt cooperative or hostile act.

In general it may be said that the things which we take for granted without inquiry or reflection are just the things which determine our conscious thinking and decide our conclusions. And these habitudes which lie below the level of reflection are just those which have been formed in the constant give and take of relationship with others.

You can teach students to develop the ability to think reflectively, and you can help them understand what this means, but if they are not inclined to do so they never will.

In laying hands upon the sacred ark of absolute permanency, in treating the forms that had been regarded as types of fixity and perfection as originating and passing away, the Origin of Species 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.

We cannot think of ourselves save as to some extent social being. Hence, we cannot separate the idea of ourselves and our own good from our idea of others and their good.

There is, I think, no point in the philosophy of progressive education which is sounder than its emphasis upon the importance of the participation of the learner in the formation of the purposes which direct his [sic] activities in the learning process, just as there is no defect in traditional education greater than its failure to secure the active cooperation of the pupil in construction of the purposes involved in his studying.

Expertness of taste is at once the result and reward of constant exercise of thinking.

Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites. It is given to formulating its beliefs in terms of Either/Ors, between which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities.

Historically the great movements for human liberation have always been movements to change institutions and not to preserve them intact. It follows from what has been said that there have been movements to bring about a changed distribution of power to do - and power to think and to express thought is a power to do- so that there would be a more balanced, a more equal, even, and equitable system of human liberties.

What holds for adults holds even more for children, sensitive and conscious of differences. I certainly hope that the Board of Education will think very, very seriously before it introduces this division and antagonism in our public schools.

Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites.

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

Society exists through a process of transmission quite as much as biological life. This transmission occurs by means of communication of habits of doing, thinking, and feeling from the older to the younger.

I should venture to assert that the most pervasive fallacy of philosophic thinking goes back to neglect of context.

The real process of education should be the process of learning to think through the application of real problems.

Thinking is the accurate and deliberate instituting of connections between what is done and its consequences.

Intelligent thinking means an increment of freedom in action-an emancipation from chance and fatality. 'Thought' represents the suggestion of a way of response that is different from that which would have been followed if intelligent observation had not effected an inference as to the future.

We only think when we are confronted with problems.

The intellectual content of religions has always finally adapted itself to scientific and social conditions after they have become clear.... For this reason I do not think that those who are concerned about the future of a religious attitude should trouble themselves about the conflict of science with traditional doctrines.

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think -- rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.

Anyone who has begun to think, places some portion of the world in jeopardy.

For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an ‘ism becomes so involved in reaction against other ‘isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities.

No thought, no idea, can possibly be conveyed as an idea from one person to another. When it is told it is to the one to whom it is told another fact, not an idea. The communication may stimulate the other person to realize the question for himself and to think out a like idea, or it may smother his intellectual interest and suppress his dawning effort at thought. But what he directly gets cannot be an idea. Only by wrestling with the conditions of the problem at first hand, seeking and finding his own way out, does he think.

The only freedom that is of enduring importance is the freedom of intelligence, that is to say, freedom of observation and of judgment, exercised in behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worth while. The commonest mistake made about freedom is, I think, to identify it with freedom of movement, or, with the external or physical side of activity.

Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society.