Wit & Attitude Quote by John Dewey

Dewey grabs the romantic crutch out from under “luck” and replaces it with something closer to weather: constant, impersonal, and only partly predictable. The opening clause, “Luck, bad if not good, will always be with us,” concedes contingency without sentimentalizing it. Accidents happen; outcomes wobble. But then he pivots to the provocation: luck “favors the intelligent” and “shows its back to the stupid.” That personification is doing real work. Luck isn’t morally just, yet it behaves as if it has preferences, which is Dewey’s sly way of pointing to the human factor behind what we call chance.

The subtext is anti-fatalism, but also anti-complaint. Dewey, a pragmatist and a major architect of progressive-era faith in education, is arguing that “intelligence” isn’t a badge you’re born with; it’s a habit of inquiry. The intelligent are the people who notice weak signals, revise plans, learn from mistakes, and build environments where fewer things are left to raw chance. What looks like luck is often preparation plus attention plus the willingness to experiment.

“Stupid” here isn’t just low IQ; it’s rigidness, incuriosity, and the refusal to connect actions to consequences. In Dewey’s world, stupidity is social as much as personal: institutions can be stupid, too, when they punish learning and reward rote compliance. The quote’s sting is strategic. It shames the posture of helplessness and sells a democratic promise: you can’t abolish luck, but you can cultivate the kind of intelligence that keeps meeting it halfway.