Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situations of experience its own full and unique meaning.
Meaning of the quote
The quote means that we can find true happiness in life when we use all of our abilities to understand the unique meaning and purpose in every experience we have, even as things change around us.
About John Dewey
John Dewey was an influential American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer of the 20th century. He was a strong advocate for democracy, believing that it should be reflected in education, communication, and civil society. Dewey’s ideas on pragmatism and functional psychology also made him a pioneering figure in these fields.
More quotes from John Dewey
Skepticism: the mark and even the pose of the educated mind.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
Luck, bad if not good, will always be with us. But it has a way of favoring the intelligent and showing its back to the stupid.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
Man is not logical and his intellectual history is a record of mental reserves and compromises. He hangs on to what he can in his old beliefs even when he is compelled to surrender their logical basis.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
Without some goals and some efforts to reach it, no man can live.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
We only think when we are confronted with problems.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
By object is meant some element in the complex whole that is defined in abstraction from the whole of which it is a distinction.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
Time and memory are true artists; they remould reality nearer to the heart’s desire.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
One lives with so many bad deeds on one’s conscience and some good intentions in one’s heart.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
To me faith means not worrying.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troublesome work to undertake the alternation of old beliefs.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
Man lives in a world of surmise, of mystery, of uncertainties.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
Nature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situations of experience its own full and unique meaning.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
Anyone who has begun to think, places some portion of the world in jeopardy.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
Just as a flower which seems beautiful and has color but no perfume, so are the fruitless words of the man who speaks them but does them not.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
The belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)
No man’s credit is as good as his money.
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859-1952)