Philosophical and Psychological Foundations of Education

QUOTATIONS BY TOPIC

RIGOR

Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

Discipline, hard work, postponement of pleasure, forcing himself, molding and training himself, all become necessary even for the "born physician." No matter how much he loves his work, there are still chores that must be swallowed for the sake of the whole. ~ Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being, p. 193

God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please,--you can never have both. Between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Intellect"

Students who are never required to do what they cannot do never do what they can do. ~ John Stuart Mill

When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome. ~ William James, Talks to Students, The Gospel of Relaxation

What our human emotions seem to require is the sight of the struggle going on. The moment the fruits are being merely eaten, things become ignoble.~ William James, Talks to Students, On What Makes a Life Significant

To have a high standard of excellence often makes the whole difference of rendering our work good when it would otherwise be mediocre. ~ John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address at Saint Andrews

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

The development of informed scholarship, however, requires that all educational beliefs undergo challenge, that all survive careful scrutiny and analysis. Challenge alters and destroys but also clarifies and strengthens. ~ Frank Pajares, Preservice Teachers’ Beliefs

I continue to compose because that fatigues me less than resting. ~ Mozart

We cannot learn without pain. ~ Aristotle

If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies. ~ Albert Einstein

As the strength of the body lies chiefly in being able to endure hardship, so also does that of the mind. ~ John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Extend the law of necessity into the sphere of morals and learn to lose whatever can be taken from you, and to rise above the chances of life. . . . [The good things] will not possess you but you will possess them; and you will discover that in this passing world man only enjoys what he is ready to give up. You will not have the illusion of imaginary pleasures, it is true, but neither will you suffer the sorrows that attend them. When you no longer attach an undue importance to life you will pass your own life untroubled and come to the end of it without fear. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile

Men ought to be occupied in such a way that, filled with the idea of the end which they have before their eyes, they are not conscious of themselves, and the best rest for them is the rest which follows work. ~ Immanuel Kant, Thoughts on Education

Where there are things to be done the end is not to survey and recognize the various things, but rather to do them. ~ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

Every gain on the wrong side undoes the effect of many conquests on the right. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly. ~ Thomas Paine

Every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

There is, in fact, no greater school of effort than the steady struggle to attend to immediately repulsive or difficult objects of thought which have grown to interest us through their association as means, with some remote ideal end. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

The same thing recurring on different days, in different contexts, read, recited on, referred to again and again, related to other things and reviewed, gets well wrought into mental structure.~ William James, Talks to Teachers

Do nondoing, strive for nonstriving, savour the flavourless, regard the small as important, make much of little, repay enmity with virtue; plan for difficulty while it is still easy, do the great while it is still small.~ Lao-Tzu

For the thing to be done does not choose, I imagine, to tarry the leisure of the doer, but the doer must be at the beck of the thing to be done, and not treat it as a secondary affair. From these considerations it follows, that all things will be produced in superior quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else. ~ Plato, The Republic

Then we must include in the objects of our search a good memory, a dauntless demeanour, and a thorough love of work. ~ Plato, The Republic

Art, when really cultivated, and not merely practised empirically, maintains, what it first gave the conception of, an ideal Beauty, to be eternally aimed at, though surpassing what can be actually attained; and by this idea it trains us never to be completely satisfied with imperfection in what we ourselves do and are: to idealize, as much as possible, every work we do, and most of all, our own characters and lives. ~ John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address at Saint Andrews

Those who know how to employ opportunities will often find that they can create them: and what we achieve depends less on the amount of time we possess, than on the use we make of our time. ~ John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address at Saint Andrews

The difficulty is, in part, that scholars of modest competence—most of us—take the course most open: exacting work within a narrow range. That same degree of exacting competence applied to a broader range surely would better serve the effective undergraduate teacher. ~ Kenneth Eble, The Craft of Teaching

Doing entails risk. ~ Kenneth Eble, The Craft of Teaching

Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up: a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

I can only dislike what I am doing under the pain of not doing it well. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

It is also false to consider seriousness and joy to be contradictory, as if joy were the enemy of methodological rigor. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

It's no man's business whether he has genius or not; work he must whatever he is but quietly and steadily; and the natural and unforced results of such work will be the things he was meant to do and will be his best. No agonies or heart-renderings will enable him to do any better; if he be a great man they be great things; if a small man, small things; but always, if thus peacefully done, good and right; always, if restlessly and ambitiously done, false, hollow, and despicable. ~ Ruskin

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Last updated:
September 19, 2008 4:23 PM