34 Quotes by Edward Thorndike

To the intelligent man with an interest in human nature it must often appear strange that so much of the energy of the scientific world has been spent on the study of the body and so little on the study of the mind.

Psychology helps to measure the probability that an aim is attainable.

Psychology is the science of the intellects, characters and behavior of animals including man.

On the whole, the psychological work of the last quarter of the nineteenth century emphasized the study of consciousness to the neglect of the total life of intellect and character

Human education is concerned with certain changes in the intellects, characters and behavior of men, its problems being roughly included under these four topics: Aims, materials, means and methods.

Nowhere more truly than in his mental capacities is man a part of nature.

There is no reasoning, no process of inference or comparison; there is no thinking about things, no putting two and two together; there are no ideas - the animal does not think of the box or of the food or of the act he is to perform.

The restriction of studies of human intellect and character to studies of conscious states was not without influence on a scientific studies of animal psychology.

Human beings are accustomed to think of intellect as the power of having and controlling ideas and of ability to learn as synonymous with ability to have ideas. But learning by having ideas is really one of the rare and isolated events in nature.