Philosophical and Psychological Foundations of Education

QUOTATIONS BY TOPIC

BELIEFS

The great world, the background, in all of us, is the world of our beliefs. That is the world of the permanencies and immensities. ~ William James to Helen Keller, 1908, The Correspondence of William James, Vol. 12, p. 135

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind. ~ William James

They are able who think they are able. ~ Virgil

Chacun est bien ou mal selon qu'il s'en trouve . . . . Et en cela seul la croyance se donne essence et vérité. ~ Michel de Montaigne

Over time our imagined traits proceed to make themselves more real. ~ Marvin Minsky, The Emotion Machine, p. 61

We must place ourselves inside the heads of our students and try to understand as far as possible the sources and strengths of their conceptions. ~ Howard Gardner, The Unschooled Mind

Whether you think that you can or you can't, you're usually right. ~ Henry Ford

If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

It requires troublesome work to undertake the alteration of old beliefs. ~ John Dewey, How We Think

Believe you can and you're halfway there. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Some things have to be believed to be seen. ~ Ralph Hodgson

It is our duty as human beings to proceed as though the limits of our capabilities do not exist. ~ Teilhard de Chardin

The student must be willing to become as articulate as possible about what he has believed—or what he has been asked to believe—up until this point. He must be willing to tell himself who he is and has been, and possibly, why that will no longer quite do. ~ Mark Edmundson, Why Read?, p. 34

Self-beliefs that have served a protective function for years are not quickly discarded. ~ Albert Bandura, Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control, p. 83

Familiarity breeds contempt, but it also breeds something like affection. We get used to the chains we wear, and we miss them when removed. ~ John Dewey, The Child and the Curriculum

He does not believe that does not live according to his belief . ~ Sigmund Freud

Belief is a rule for action. ~ Charles Peirce, "How to Make Our Ideas Clear"

We grow accustomed to everything and sooner than we expect. ~ Italo Calvino

And assuredly [man] will love that most whose interests he regards as identical with his own, and in whose prosperity or adversity he believes his own fortunes to be involved. ~ Plato, The Republic

Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day. ~ Bertrand Russell

Get to your students' Final Narratives, and your own; seek out the defining beliefs. Uncover central convictions about politics, love, money, the good life. It's there that, as Socrates knew, real thinking starts. ~ Mark Edmundson, Why Read?, p. 28

The process here is always the same. The individual has a stock of old opinions already, but he meets a new experience that puts them to a strain. Somebody contradicts them; or in a reflective moment he discovers that they contradict each other; or he hears of facts with which they are incompatible; or desires arise in him which they cease to satisfy. The result is an inward trouble to which his mind till then had been a stranger, and from which he seeks to escape by modifying his previous mass of opinions. He saves as much of it as he can, for in this matter of belief we are all extreme conservatives. ~ William James, Pragmatism

The most violent revolutions in an individual's beliefs leave most of his old order standing. ~ William James, Pragmatism

Ought we ever not to believe what it is better for us to believe? ~ William James, Pragmatism

There is nothing in which an untrained mind shows itself more hopelessly incapable, than in drawing the proper general conclusions from its own experience. ~ John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address at Saint Andrews

Easier than thinking with surrender of already formed ideas and detachment from facts already learned, is just to stick by what is already said, looking about for something with which to buttress it against attack. ~ John Dewey, The Child and the Curriculum

Beliefs and assumptions about teaching, whether in a school or in any other context, are a direct reflection of the beliefs and assumptions the teacher holds about the learner. ~ Jerome Bruner, The Culture of Education, pp. 46-47

Stated boldly, the emerging thesis is that educational practices in classrooms are premised on a set of folk beliefs about learners' minds, some of which may have worked advertently toward or inadvertently against the child's own welfare. ~ Jerome Bruner, The Culture of Education, pp. 49-50

Knowledge, after all, is justified belief. ~ Jerome Bruner, The Culture of Education, p. 59

The student must be willing to become as articulate as possible about what he has believed—or what he has been asked to believe—up until this point. He must be willing to tell himself who he is and has been, and possibly, why that will no longer quite do. ~ Mark Edmundson, Why Read?, p. 34

Men are not afraid of things, but of how they view them. ~ Epictetus

If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Men are disturbed not by things that happen, but by their opinions of the things that happen. ~ Epictetus

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedom—-to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. ~ Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, p. 86

It's the belief that you are already a star before you become one that makes you one. ~ Barry Gibb, CBS Sunday Morning, November 2009

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Last updated:
November 1, 2009 10:09 AM