34 Quotes by Edward Thorndike

Just as the science and art of agriculture depend upon chemistry and botany, so the art of education depends upon physiology and psychology.

For origin and development of human faculty we must look to these processes of association in lower animals.

The un-conscious distortion of the facts is almost harmless compared to the unconscious neglect of an animal's mental life until it verges on the unusual and marvelous.

Some statements concern the conscious states of the animal, what he is to himself as an inner life; others concern his original and acquired ways of response, his behavior, what he is an outside observer

The intellectual evolution of the race consists in an increase in the number, delicacy, complexity, permanence and speed of formation of such associations.

This growth in the number, speed of formation, permanence, delicacy and complexity of associations possible for an animal reaches its acme in the case of man.

When, instead of merely associating some act with some situation in the animal way, we think the situation out, we have a set of particular feelings of its elements.

He who learns and runs away, lives to learn another day.

It will of course, be understood that directly or indirectly, soon or late, every advance in the sciences of human nature will contribute to our success in controlling human nature and changing it to the advantage of the common wheel.