Edward Thorndike Quotes

‘Just as the science and art of agriculture depend upon chemistry and botany, so the art of education depends upon physiology and psychology.’ – Edward Thorndike

‘Psychology is the science of the intellects, characters and behavior of animals including man.’ – Edward Thorndike

‘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.’ – Edward Thorndike

‘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.’ – Edward Thorndike

‘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.’ – Edward Thorndike

‘Nowhere more truly than in his mental capacities is man a part of nature.’ – Edward Thorndike

‘Psychology helps to measure the probability that an aim is attainable.’ – Edward Thorndike

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

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

‘For origin and development of human faculty we must look to these processes of association in lower animals.’ – Edward Thorndike