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
What should I do?" "Throw up in your typewriter every morning." "Yeah." "Clean up every noon.
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
What we [writers] do might be done in solitude and with great desperation, but it tends to produce exactly the opposite. It tends to produce community and in many people hope and joy.
I can't distract myself enough here, for sketches to a new opera are constantly buzzing around in my head, to the extent that I need all my strength to wrest myself from them.
A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.
It's true that writing is a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them.
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