What is true [in psychology] is alas not new, the new not true.

Sensorial perception, for example, certainly occurs with greater or less accuracy according to the degree of interest; it is constantly given other directions by the change of external stimuli and by ideas.

No matter how thoroughly a person may have learned the Greek alphabet, he will never be in a condition to repeat it backwards without further training.

The relation of repetitions for learning and for repeating English stanzas needs no amplification. These were learned by heart on the first day with less than half of the repetitions necessary for the shortest of the syllable series.

A poem is learned by heart and then not again repeated. We will suppose that after a half year it has been forgotten: no effort of recollection is able to call it back again into consciousness.

The constant flux and caprice of mental events do not admit of the establishment of stable experimental conditions.

Mental states of every kind, - sensations, feelings, ideas, - which were at one time present in consciousness and then have disappeared from it, have not with their disappearance absolutely ceased to exist.