Q0270

John Dewey

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Experience is not a veil that shuts man off from nature; it is a means of penetrating continually further into the heart of nature.
Thinker John Dewey
School Pragmatism
Source Experience and Nature
Theme Experience
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Experience and Nature, within the tradition of Pragmatism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of experience, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In John Dewey's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: John Dewey. (n.d.). Experience is not a veil that shuts man off from nature; it is a means of penetrating continually further into the heart of nature. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0270

MLA: John Dewey. “Experience is not a veil that shuts man….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0270.

Chicago: John Dewey. “Experience is not a veil that shuts man….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0270.

Same thinker

More from John Dewey

  1. Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.
  2. The quest for certainty…has always been a quest for a peace that is assured.
  3. The quest for certainty…is a quest for a peace which is assured.

All quotations by John Dewey

Same theme

More on experience

  1. Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience.
  2. Their being is to be perceived.
  3. For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other.
  4. Consciousness…does not appear to itself chopped up in bits…It is nothing jointed; it flows.
  5. In the Garden of Eden Adam saw the animals before he named them: in the traditional system, children named the animals before they saw them.

Browse the experience theme