John Dewey Hangs Ten

If God were trying to reach out to us, and if he felt a certain urgency about it...that's what it's about.... And if God were trying to reach out to us, and teach us something about the deepest nature of matter, he might use some drugged-out surfers.

In the case of Dewey, knowing a lot about what his beliefs were is a difficult task, for precision and clarity often escaped him. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's remark that Dewey wrote as "God would have spoken had He been inarticulate but keenly desirous to tell you how it was" is perhaps the most famous of many comments on this opacity.