QUOTES FOR THE GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY COURSE

 

 

ADOLPHE QUETELET

 

The more advanced the sciences have become, the more they have tended to enter the domain of mathematics, which is a sort of centre towards which they converge. We can judge of the perfection to which a science has come by the facility, more or less great, with which it may be approached by calculation.

[Instructions populaires sur le calcul des probability (1825), "Conclusions", p. 230. English translation by R. Beamish (1839)]

http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Quetelet.html

 

 

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY (on reading Darwin's Origin Of Species)

 

How extremely stupid not to have thought of that.

[Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley F.R.S (1900) edited by Leonard Huxley, p. 170]

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Henry_Huxley

 

 

WILHELM WUNDT

 

Materialistic psychology ... is contradicted by ... the fact of consciousness itself, which cannot possibly be derived from any physical qualities of material molecules or atoms.

[Wundt, W. (1912/1973). An introduction to psychology. (p. 155)]

 

Let us remember the rule, valid for psychology as well as for any other science, that we cannot understand the complex phenomena, before we have become familiar with the simple ones which presuppose the former.

[Wundt, W. (1912/1973). An introduction to psychology. (p. 151)]

 

 

JOHN BROADUS WATSON

 

Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness. The behaviorist, in his efforts to get a unitary scheme of animal response, recognizes no dividing line between man and brute. The behavior of man, with all of its refinement and complexity, forms only a part of the behaviorist's total scheme of investigation

[Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological Review, 20, 158-177.]

 

I believe we can write a psychology, define it as Pillsbury [as the "science of behavior"], and never go back upon our definition: never use the terms consciousness, mental states, mind, content, introspectively verifiable, imagery, and the like. I believe that we can do it in a few years... It can be done in terms of stimulus and response, in terms of habit formation, habit integrations and the like.

[Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological Review, 20, 158-177.]

 

I should like to go one step further now and say, "Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors." I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years. Please note that when this experiment is made I am to be allowed to specify the way the children are to be brought up and the type of world they have to live in.

[Watson, J. B. (1925). Behaviorism. (rev. ed. 1930, p. 104)]

 

I sometimes think I regret that I could not have a group of infant farms where I could have brought up thirty pure-blooded Negroes on one, thirty 'pure'-blooded Anglo-Saxons on another, and thirty Chinese on a third -- all under similar conditions. Some day it will be done, but by a younger man."

[Watson, J. B. (1936). John Broadus Watson. In C. Murchison (Ed.), A history of psychology in autobiography (Vol. 3, pp. 271-281). Worcester, MA: Clark University Press.]

 

Second only to Freud, though at a rather great distance, John B. Watson is, in my judgment, the most important figure in the history of psychological thought during the first half of the century.

Understood or misunderstood, quoted or misquoted, his name and work are a symbol around which debate has swirled for quite some time...

Among psychologists the sound core of Watson's contribution has been widely accepted; his errors and mistakes have been forgotten.

... I have not the slightest doubt that, with all the light and all the shadow, he is a very major figure. Psychology owes him much. His place in the history of our civilization is not inconsiderable and it is secure. Such men are exceedingly rare. We ought to accept them and appreciate them for what they are.

[Bergmann, Gustav (1956). The Contribution of John B. Watson. Psychological Review, 63:4, 265-276.]

 

Citation by the American Psychological Association at New York, New York, on September 2, 1957: "To Dr. John B. Watson, whose work has been one of the vital determinants of the form and substance of modern psychology. He initiated a revolution in psychological thought, and his writings have been the point of departure for continuing lines of fruitful research."

 

 

ULRIC NEISSER

 

[T]he term "cognition" refers to all the processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used. It is concerned with these processes even when they operate in the absence of relevant stimulation, as in images and hallucinations. Such terms as sensation, perception, imagery, retention, recall, problem solving, and thinking, among many others, refer to hypothetical stages or aspects of cognition.

[Ulric Neisser (1967). Cognitive Psychology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. (p. 4).]

 

 

WILLIAM JAMES

 

...[P]sychology is passing into a less simple phase. Within a few years what one may call a microscopic psychology has arisen in Germany, carried on by experimental methods, asking of course every moment for introspective data, but eliminating their uncertainty by operating on a large scale and taking statistical means. This method taxes patience to the utmost, and could hardly have arisen in a country whose natives could be bored.

[The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1 (1890), ch.7 pp.192-193]

 

Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life.

[The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1 (1890), ch.9 p.239]

 

... Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, 'I won't count this time!' Well! he may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibres the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes."

[The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1 (1890), ch.4 p.127 [also in Popular Science Monthly for February 1887)]

 

 

KURT LEWIN

 

... there is nothing so practical as a good theory.

[Lewin, K. (1951). Problems of research in social psychology. In D. Cartwright (Ed.), Field theory in social science: Selected theoretical papers (pp. 155-169). New York: Harper & Row. (p169)]

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Lewin

 

 

SIGMUND FREUD

 

I do not doubt that it would be easier for fate to take away your suffering than it would for me. But you will see for yourself that much has been gained if we succeed in turning your hysterical misery into common unhappiness. With a mental life that has been restored to health, you will be better armed against that unhappiness.

[Studies on Hysteria (1895) co-written with Josef Breuer, as translated by Nicola Luckhurst (2004)]

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud

 

 

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE

 

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"

...[T]he real value of a real education ... has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

"This is water."

"This is water."

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime.

[David Foster Wallace, commencement address to the graduates of Kenyon College in 2005]

https://www.1843magazine.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words