Thorndike Quotes & Sayings

Human folk are as a matter of fact eager to find intelligence in animals. — 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. — Edward Thorndike

I think we all have the germ of every other person inside of us. — Sybil 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

I am sometimes asked, 'Why do you spend so much of your time and money talking about kindness to animals when there is so much cruelty to men?' I answer: 'I am working at the roots.' — George Thorndike Angell

All that exists, exists in some amount and can be measured. — Edward Thorndike

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. — 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

It is the well educated who will improve society - and they will improve it, at first, by criticizing it, and we are giving them the tools to criticize it. Naturally, as students, the brighter of them will begin their improvements upon society by criticizing us." To Owen, old Archie Thorndike would sing a slightly different song: "It is your responsibility to find fault with me, it is mine to hear you out. But don't expect me to change. I'm not going to change; I'm going to retire! Get the new headmaster to make the changes; that's when I made changes - when I was new." "WHAT CHANGES DID YOU MAKE?" Owen Meany asked. "That's another reason I'm retiring!" old Thorny told Owen amiably. "My memory's shot! — John Irving

The dog, on the other hand, has few or no ideas because his brain acts in coarse fashion and because there are few connections with each single process. — Edward Thorndike

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. — Edward Thorndike

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. — Edward Thorndike

So the animal finally performs in that situation only the fitting act. — Edward Thorndike

Whatever exists at all exists in some amount. To know it thoroughly involves knowing its quantity as well as its quality. — Edward Thorndike

Out, Himmler! Out of my sight! Go and visit your club-footed daughter! Bring her sauerkraut! Sauerkraut and heroin, Thorndike! She will love it! She will - ! — William Peter Blatty

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

After orbiting the moon, mundane business problems did not faze him. — William N. Thorndike Jr.

The real difference between a man's scientific judgments about himself and the judgment of others about him is he has added sources of knowledge. — Edward Thorndike

I want Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D played at my funeral. If it isn't I shall jolly well want to know why. — Sybil Thorndike

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

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

But to the managing editor of Life, Joseph J. Thorndike, Jr., the problem centered on bias. "Of course, we did not intentionally mislead our readers," he wrote. But I do think that we ourselves were misled by our bias. Because of that bias we did not exert ourselves enough to report the side we didn't believe in. We were too ready to accept the evidence of pictures like the empty auditorium at Omaha and to ignore the later crowds. We were too eager to report the Truman "bobbles" and to pass over the things that were wrong about the Republican campaign: empty Dewey speeches, the bad Republican candidates, the dangers of Republican commitments to big business. — David McCullough

Seven Rules Formulated for Teaching Arithmetic:
1) Consider the situation the pupils faces.
2) Consider the response you wish to connect with.
3) Form the bond; do not expect it to come by miracle.
4) Other things being equal, form no bond that will have to be broken.
5) Other things being equal, do not form two or three bonds when one will serve.
6) Other things being equal, form bonds in the way that they are required later to act.
7) Favor, therefore, the situations which life itself will offer, and the responses which life itself will demand. (p. 101) — Edward Lee Thorndike

From the lowest animals of which we can affirm intelligence up to man this type of intellect is found. — 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. — Edward Thorndike

[When asked if she had ever considered divorcing Sir Lewis Casson:] Divorce? Never. But murder often! — Sybil Thorndike

Colors fade, temples crumble, empires fall, but wise words endure. — Edward Thorndike

We don't want bores in the theatre. We don't want standardised acting, standard actors with standard-shaped legs. Acting needs everybody, cripples, dwarfs and people with noses so long. Give us something that is different. — Sybil Thorndike

Standing before you as the advocate of the lower races, I declare what I believe cannot be gainsaid ... that just so soon and so far as we pour into all our schools the songs, the poems, and literature of mercy toward these lower creatures, just so soon and so far shall we reach the roots not only of cruelty, but of crime. — George Thorndike Angell

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

The function of intellect is to provide a means of modifying our reactions to the circumstances of life, so that we may secure pleasure, the symptom of welfare. — 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

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. — Edward Thorndike

Of course present knowledge of psychology is nearer to zero than to complete perfection, and its applications to teaching must therefore be often incomplete, indefinite, and insecure. The application of psychology to teaching is more like that of botany and chemistry to farming than like that of physiology and pathology to medicine. Anyone of good sense can farm fairly well without science, and anyone of good sense can teach fairly well without knowing and applying psychology. Still, as the farmer with the knowledge of the applications of botany and chemistry to farming is, other things being equal, more successful than the farmer without it, so the teacher will, other things being equal, be the more successful who can apply psychology, the science of human nature, to the problems of the school. (pp. 9-10) — Edward Lee Thorndike

I was brought up in a clergyman's household so I am a first-class liar. — Sybil Thorndike

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. — Edward Thorndike

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. — Edward Thorndike

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

It's only people who are hysterical who can play hysterical parts. — Sybil 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. — Edward Thorndike

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. — Edward Thorndike

The sixties - most of which took place in the seventies... — John Thorndike

... and yet, at the end of it all, a few very broad lines did seem to stick out, like the primary colors in a painting that explain all the confusing blends. And once I had understood my artificial convention, as one understands a convention of the theatre, it was surprising how many adventures did, with a squeeze, fit in their compartments- provided that I chuckled as I did the squeezing and reminded myself that it was all a game anyway. — Joseph J. Thorndike Jr.

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

The commonest error of the gifted scholar, inexperienced in teaching, is to expect pupils to know what they have been told. But telling is not teaching. The expression of facts that are in one's mind is a natural impulse when one wishes others to know these facts, just as to cuddle and pat a sick child is a natural impulse. But telling a fact to a child may not cure his ignorance of it any more than patting him will cure his scarlet fever. (p. 61) — Edward Lee Thorndike