If all meanings could be adequately expressed by words, the arts of painting and music would not exist.
Interpretation
Words cannot fully capture the depth of human experience, hence the need for art and music.
John Dewey's quote highlights the limitations of language in conveying the full spectrum of human emotions and experiences. He suggests that if words were enough to express all meanings, there would be no necessity for the expressive arts such as painting and music, which serve to communicate feelings and ideas that go beyond verbal communication.
In practice
During an art exhibition, this quote can inspire discussion about the role of creativity.
Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth. In this way, the teacher always is the prophet of the true God and the usherer-in of the true Kingdom of God.
Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.
It science involves an intelligent and persistent endeavor to revise current beliefs so as to weed out what is erroneous, to add to their accuracy, and, above all, to give them such shape that the dependencies of the various facts upon one another may be as obvious as possible.
For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an βism becomes so involved in reaction against other βisms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities.
Any genuine teaching will result, if successful, in someone's knowing how to bring about a better condition of things than existed earlier.
The reactionaries are in possession of force, in not only the army and police, but in the press and the schools
I certainly consider a great appreciation of painting to be the best indication of a most perfect mind.
We get so many people saying short fiction is not economical, that it doesn't sell; but there are so many of us enjoying writing it and reading it. So it's wonderful to be around people who love short fiction too - it's like hanging around with my tribe.
You move just a finger, say the slightest word, something's bound to linger-be heard.
A drawing is an autobiographical record of one's discovery of an event - either seen, remembered or imagined. A 'finished' work is an attempt to construct an event in itself.
Burmese authors and artists can play the role that artists everywhere play. They help to mold the outlook of a society - not the whole outlook, and they are not the only ones to mold the outlook of society, but they have an important role to play there.
I have been frequently accused of deliberately twisting subject matter to my point of view. Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference. Opinion often consists of a kind of criticism. But criticism can come out of love.
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