John Dewey Quotes

Customs and traditions followed in North and South India are different. But the underlying sentiments are the same.

Cultures grow on the vine of tradition.

I'm much more interested in developing human character in society. And I'm much more interested in the social conditions that foster commitment to ideals, a sense of solidarity, purposefulness, steadfastness, responsibility.

My people have called upon me to speak to you. The red man has no books, and when he wishes to make known his views...like his father before him...he speaks with his mouth. He is afraid of writing. When he speaks he knows what he says; the Great Spirit hears him. Writing is the invention of the pale faces;

Oh yes. And a great many of them still do.

What is important is the character that I play. Making an impact is far more important than the length of the role.

We have a unique culture.

I started studying indigenous cultures and I was really inspired by their life styles and the way that they lived. Part of that was knowing how to survive in the wild and knowing how to heal themselves from the plants that grew around them.

In this great society wide lying around us, a critical analysis would find very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom and gross sense.

What determines how much time and deliberate practice a child is willing to devote to achievement? Nothing less than her character.

What do people really believe in any more apart from sport and music?

Men of character are the conscience of the society to which they belong.

Experience is the mother of custom.

In order for good to blossom it must be cultivated and exercised by constant practice, and to be truly righteous there is required a daily pruning of the evil growth of our characters by a daily repen- tance from sin.

Education is not confined to books, and the finest characters often graduate from no college, but make experience their master, and life their book. [Some care] only for the mental culture, and [are] in danger of over-studying, under the delusion . . . that learning must be had at all costs, forgetting that health and real wisdom are better.

A learned person will become noble only when he or she has put into real practice what has been learned, instead of mere words.

The state does not demand justice of its members, but thinks that it succeeds very well with the least degree of it, hardly more than rogues practice; and so do the neighborhood and the family. What is commonly called Friendship even is only a little more honor among rogues.

When you start playing a character every day for seven weeks, it suddenly starts becoming easier.

When you look back at your own life, you see ... the sufferings you went through, each time you would have avoided it if you possibly could. And yet, when you look at the depth of your character now, isn't a part of that a product of those experiences? Weren't those experiences part of what created the depth of your inner being?

I love actors. I love working with actors. I really enjoy the process. I love having those in-depth discussions about the interior of their character, and actors really love to discuss that too.

I do assume that a character or a place is inexhaustible and will always reward further attention.

It's been important to cultures throughout history with the court jester and the witch doctor and the shaman - all preach the same thing.

The [engineer] should be equipped with knowledge of many branches of study and varied kinds of learning, for it is by his judgement that all work done by the other arts is put to test. This knowledge is the child of practice and theory.

I always knew that I could go deep. How deep? I don't know. But it always seems that with each character I take on, I'm challenged to go deeper than the last time, and then again deeper than the last time. This is the deepest I've ever been asked to dive. And to see how deep I actually went for this, and that I wasn't afraid to go there in order to give Tyler exactly what he envisioned for the character, which was pretty deep, that's what I discovered about myself.

That knowledge which adds greatness to character is knowledge so handled as to transform every phase of immediate experience.