On the record
The idea has influenced the concrete political movement, but it has not caused it.
Said by
John Dewey
Source
gutenberg.orgJohn Dewey: “The idea has influenced the concrete political movement, but it has not caused it.”
Editor's note · Context
Dewey asserts that while the idea of democracy has influenced political movements, it did not directly cause them.
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More from John Dewey
Ideas which are not communicated, shared, and reborn in expression are but soliloquy, and soliloquy is but broken and imperfect thought.
Publication is partial and the public which results is partially informed and formed until the meanings it purveys pass from mouth to mouth.
But the wingèd words of conversation in immediate intercourse have a vital import lacking in the fixed and frozen words of written speech.
Systematic and continuous inquiry into all the conditions which affect association and their dissemination in print is a precondition of the creation of a true public.