Quotes from Edward Thorndike

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

Amongst the minds of animals that of man leads, not as a demigod from another planet, but as a king from the same race.

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.

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 weal.

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.

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.

Dogs get lost hundreds of times and no one ever notices it or sends an account of it to a scientific magazine.

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.

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.

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