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Ideas which have been developed simultaneously or in immediate succession in the same mind mutually reproduce each other, and do this with greater ease in the direction of the original succession and with a certainty proportional to the frequency with which they were together.

Hermann Ebbinghaus
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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.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
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.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
Series of syllables which have been learned by heart, forgotten, and learned anew must be similar as to their inner conditions at the times when they can be recited.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
The aim of the tests carried on with these syllable series was, by means of repeated audible perusal of the separate series, to so impress them that immediately afterward they could voluntarily be reproduced.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
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.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
The school-boy doesn't force himself to learn his vocabularies and rules altogether at night, but knows that be must impress them again in the morning.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
The amount of detailed information which an individual has at his command and his theoretical elaborations of the same are mutually dependent; they grow in and through each other.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
Out of the simple consonants of the alphabet and our eleven vowels and diphthongs all possible syllables of a certain sort were constructed, a vowel sound being placed between two consonants.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
The constant flux and caprice of mental events do not admit of the establishment of stable experimental conditions.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
Often, even after years, mental states once present in consciousness return to it with apparent spontaneity and without any act of the will; that is, they are reproduced involuntarily.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
These syllables, about 2,300 in number, were mixed together and then drawn out by chance and used to construct series of different lengths, several of which each time formed the material for a test.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
On the basis of the familiar experience that that which is learned with difficulty is better retained, it would have been safe to prophesy such an effect from the greater number of repetitions.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
Mental events, it is said, are not passive happenings but the acts of a subject.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
The musician writes for the orchestra what his inner voice sings to him; the painter rarely relies without disadvantage solely upon the images which his inner eye presents to him; nature gives him his forms, study governs his combinations of them.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
Ideas which have been developed simultaneously or in immediate succession in the same mind mutually reproduce each other, and do this with greater ease in the direction of the original succession and with a certainty proportional to the frequency with which they were together.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
One needs but to say that, in the case of an unfamiliar sequence of syllables, only about seven can be grasped in one act, but that with frequent repetition and gradually increasing familiarity with the series this capacity of consciousness may be increased.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
Meanwhile the fact that the connection with the activity of memory in ordinary life is for the moment lost is of less importance than the reverse, namely, that this connection with the complications and fluctuations of life is necessarily still a too close one.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
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.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
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.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
When I tested for Billy Budd, I had that kind of confidence that comes with the certainty that you're not going to get something. I was very rough around the edges.
Terence Stamp
A liberal knows that the only certainty in this life is change but believes that the change can be directed toward a constructive end.
Henry A. Wallace
From this bestial view that the human mind consists of only sense certainty, pleasure and pain, Locke developed an equally bestial theory of the nation. Man originally existed in a State of Nature of complete liberty.
Robert Trout
I feel, sometimes, as the renaissance man must have felt in finding new riches at every point and in the certainty that unexplored areas of knowledge and experience await at every turn.
Polykarp Kusch
I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.
Michael Crichton
The only certainty is that nothing is certain.
Pliny The Elder
The Resistance is a moral certainty, not a poetic one. The true poet never uses words in order to punish someone. His judgment belongs to a creative order; it is not formulated as a prophetic scripture.
Salvatore Quasimodo
The areas of consensus shift unbelievably fast; the bubbles of certainty are constantly exploding.
Rem Koolhaas
There is no certainty; there is only adventure.
Roberto Assagioli
We can say with certainty - or 90% probability - that the new industries that are about to be born will have nothing to do with information.
Peter Drucker
If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including those things that other people are certain are impossible.
William Lyon Phelps
I found it peculiar that those who wanted to take military action could - with 100 per cent certainty - know that the weapons existed and turn out to have zero knowledge of where they were.
Hans Blix
From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.
Tom Stoppard
Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
Vaclav Havel
Fundamentalists are panicked by the apparent disintegration of the family, the disappearance of certainty and the decay of morality. Fear leads them to ask, if we cannot trust the Bible, what can we trust?
Garrett Hardin
It is to be feared that those who emigrate to New South Wales, generally anticipate too great facility in their future operations and certainty of success in conducting them; but they should recollect that competency cannot be obtained without labour.
Charles Sturt
One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO.
Thomas Carlyle
A bird in hand is a certainty. But a bird in the bush may sing.
Bret Harte
As a painter today you have to work without that essential platform. But if one does not deceive oneself and accepts this lack of certainty, other things may come into play.
Bridget Riley
Sooner or later you must move down an unknown road that leads beyond the range of the imagination, and the only certainty is that the trip has to be made.
Bruce Catton
Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.
Bertrand Russell
The unique and supreme voluptuousness of love lies in the certainty of committing evil. And men and women know from birth that in evil is found all sensual delight.
Charles Baudelaire
Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.
Ashley Montagu
Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic has problems, the psychotic has solutions.
Thomas Szasz
Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.
Karl Von Clausewitz
We regard it as a certainty that the earth, enclosed between poles, is bounded by a spherical surface.
Nicolaus Copernicus
When the human mind exists in the light of reason and no more than reason, we may say with absolute certainty that Man and all that made him will be in that instant gone.
Loren Eiseley
If a man fights his way through his doubts to the conviction that Jesus Christ is Lord, he has attained to a certainty that the man who unthinkingly accepts things can never reach.
William Barclay
To counter the avoidance of intellectual challenge and responsibility, we must reduce the domination of certainty in education.
William Glasser