John Dewey Quotes About Democracy

Quotes about: Democracy

• Talk of democracy has little content when big business rules the life of the country through its control of the means of production, exchange, the press and other means of publicity, propaganda and communication.

  John Dewey

  Country, Communication, Mean

• A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.

  John Dewey

  Government, Democracy, Form

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, Sidney Hook (2008). “The Middle Works of John Dewey, 1899-1924, Volume 9: 1916, Democracy and Education”, p.93, SIU Press

• Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.

  John Dewey

  Democracies Have, Democracy, Generations

  John Dewey (1980). “The Middle Works, 1899-1924”, p.139, SIU Press

• Everything which bars freedom and fullness of communication sets up barriers that divide human beings into sets and cliques, into antagonistic sects and factions, and thereby undermines the democratic way of life.

  John Dewey

  Communication, Democracy, Bars

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston (1988). “The Later Works, 1925-1953”, p.227, SIU Press

• The devotion of democracy to education is a familiar fact. The superficial explanation is that a government resting upon popular suffrage cannot be successful unless those who elect and who obey their governors are educated. 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.

  John Dewey

  Education, Successful, Government

  John Dewey (2015). “Democracy and Education: Top American Authors”, p.66, 谷月社

• The aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education — or that the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth.

  John Dewey

  Democracies Have, Goal, Democracy

  "Democracy and Education".

• The devotion of democracy to education is a familiar fact. . . . [A] government resting upon popular suffrage cannot be successful unless those who elect . . . their governors are educated.

  John Dewey

  Education, Successful, Government

  John Dewey (2015). “Democracy and Education: Top American Authors”, p.66, 谷月社

• Doctrine that eliminates or even obscures the function of choice of values and enlistment of desires and emotions in behalf of those chosen weakens personal responsibility for judgment and for action. It thus helps create the attitudes that welcome and support the totalitarian state.

  John Dewey

  Attitude, Freedom, Responsibility

  "The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1938-1939".

• The struggle for democracy has to be maintained on as many fronts as culture has aspects: political, economic, international, educational, scientific and artistic, religious.

  John Dewey

  Religious, Educational, Struggle

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, Steven M. Cahn (2008). “The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1938-1939”, p.186, SIU Press

• 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.

  John Dewey

  Self, Expression, Community

• The aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education ... (and) the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth. Now this idea cannot be applied to all the members of a society except where intercourse of man with man is mutual, and except where there is adequate provision for the reconstruction of social habits and institutions by means of wide stimulation arising from equitably distributed interests. And this means a democratic society.

  John Dewey

  Change, Education, Mean

  John Dewey (2012). “Democracy and Education”, p.96, Courier Corporation

• What, after all, is the public under present conditions? What are the reasons for its eclipse? What hinders it from finding and identifying itself? By what means shall its inchoate and amorphous estate be organized into effective political action relevant to present social needs and opportunities? What has happened to the public in the century and a half since the theory of political democracy was urged with such assurance and hope?

  John Dewey

  Mean, Opportunity, Political

• No government by experts in which the masses do not have the chance to inform the experts as to their needs can be anything but an oligarchy managed in the interest of the few. And the enlightenment must proceed in ways which force the administrative specialists to take account of the needs. The world has suffered more from leaders and authorities than from the masses. The essential need ... is the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion. That is the problem of the public.

  John Dewey

  Government, Leader, Enlightenment

  John Dewey (2016). “The Public and Its Problems: An Essay in Political Inquiry”, p.161, Ohio University Press

• Democracy is a way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature. . . . This faith may be enacted in statutes, but it is only on paper unless it is put in force in the attitudes which human beings display to one another in all the incidents and relations of daily life.

  John Dewey

  Attitude, Democracy, Paper

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston (1988). “The Later Works, 1925-1953”, p.226, SIU Press

• The method of democracy is to bring conflicts out into the open where their special claims can be seen and appraised, where they can be discussed and judged.

  John Dewey

  Democracy, Special, Conflict

  John Dewey, Debra Morris, Ian Shapiro (1993). “The Political Writings”, p.148, Hackett Publishing

• Democracy is a form of government only because it is a form of moral and spiritual association.

  John Dewey

  Spiritual, Government, Democracy

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston (2008). “The Early Works, 1882-1898: 1882-1888. Early essays and Leibniz's new essays concerning the human understanding”, p.240, SIU Press

• As 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

  Government, Organization, Democracy

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, Steven M. Cahn (2008). “The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1938-1939”, p.175, SIU Press

• Modern life means democracy, democracy means freeing intelligence for independent effectivenessthe emancipation of mind as an individual organ to do its own work. We naturally associate democracy, to be sure, with freedom of action, but freedom of action without freed capacity of thought behind it is only chaos.

  John Dewey

  Mean, Independent, Mind

  John Dewey (1977). “The Middle Works, 1899-1924”, p.229, SIU Press

• We have advanced far enough to say that democracy is a way of life. We have yet to realize that it is a way of personal life and one which provides a moral standard for personal conduct.

  John Dewey

  Democracy, Way, Moral

  John Dewey, Debra Morris, Ian Shapiro (1993). “The Political Writings”, p.229, Hackett Publishing

• Democracy means the belief that humanistic culture should prevail.

  John Dewey

  Mean, Democracy, Culture

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, Steven M. Cahn (2008). “The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1938-1939”, p.151, SIU Press

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