- Lived:
- 1859–1952 · Burlington, Vermont → Chicago → New York City
- Tradition:
- American pragmatism — his own brand, which he called instrumentalism
- The Big Idea:
- Ideas are not mirrors held up to a finished world; they are tools for solving problems — and democracy, education, and science are all the same tool used at different scales.
- In their words:
- Democracy is "a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience."
- If you remember one thing:
- Dewey spent ninety-two years arguing that thinking, learning, and self-government are not three activities but one — the ongoing experiment of people improving their shared life together.