John Dewey Quotes

That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.

Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.

There are forces working in the world as never before in the history of mankind for standardization, for the regimentation of us all, or what I like to call making muffins of us, muffins all like every other muffin in the muffin tin. This is the limited universe, the drying dissipating universe that we can help our children to avoid by providing them with ‘explosive material capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly'.

In a society that tries to standardize thinking, individuality is not highly prized.

I see the world become so uniform. Everybody has to be the same. I like people who are different.

No one can be profoundly original who does not avoid eccentricity.

There's nothing worse than having everybody thinking alike, talking alike and having the same direction in mind. It gets stale that way.

Unless you are unique, your opinion goes out the window.

The American people ... have a stake in con-conformity, for they know that the American genius is non-conformist.

If a man's got talent and guts to buck society, he's obviously above average. You want to hold on to him. You straighten him out and turn him into a plus value. Why throw him away? Do that enough and all you've got left are the sheep.

The great challenge which faces us is to assure that, in our society of big-ness, we do not strangle the voice of creativity, that the rules of the game do not come to overshadow its purpose, that the grand orchestration of society leaves ample room for the man who marches to the music of another drummer.

Perhaps our national ambition to standardize ourselves has behind it the notion that democracy means standardization. But standardization is the surest way to destroy the initiative, to denumb the creative impulse above all else essential to the vitality and growth of democratic ideals.

Nature made us individuals, as she did the flowers and the pebbles; but we are afraid to be peculiar, and so our society resembles a bag of marbles, or a string of mold candles. Why should we all dress after the same fashion? The frost never paints my windows twice alike.

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.

Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.

Always do something different from the others.

Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.

We have the universe to roam in in imagination. It is our virtue to be infinitely varied. The worst tyranny is uniformity.

Everybody has their own style. If you went to the movies every week and everybody acted the same way Tom Cruise did, boy, wouldn't that suck?

To be great is to be misunderstood.

I've seen stand up comedy, and after a while you start to notice that a lot of people are doing things that are like a lot of other people. There can be a bit of a herd mentality, and that's obviously less interesting because there's less going on. I'm just being totally frank with you.

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

Just trying to be different - when I hear something - I don't like to go trampling on other people's sounds.

People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ideas, fitting in instead of standing out.