Wilhelm Wundt Quotes
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt was a German physiologist, psychologist, and philosopher and the principal founder of experimental psychology. In 1879 he opened the first formal laboratory of psychological experimentation, at Leipzig, training a generation of researchers from Europe and the United States. The quotes below are attributed to Wilhelm Wundt, organized by topic.
Browse Wilhelm Wundt by topic
Wilhelm Wundt on Freedom
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“If we take an unprejudiced view of the processes of consciousness, free from all the so-called association rules and theories, we see at once that an idea is no more an even relatively constant thing than is a feeling or emotion or volitional process. There exist only changing and transient ideational processes ; there are no permanent ideas that return again and disappear again.”
p. 122
Wilhelm Wundt on Knowledge
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“The results of ethnic psychology constitute... our chief source of information regarding the general psychology of the complex mental processes.”
p. 5
Wilhelm Wundt on Life
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“From the standpoint of observation, then, we must regard it as a highly probable hypothesis that the beginnings of the mental life date from as far back as the beginnings of life at large.”
p. 31
Wilhelm Wundt on Mind
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Attributed to Wilhelm Wundt:
“Psychology is the science of immediate experience.”
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Attributed to Wilhelm Wundt:
“Mind is not a thing but a process.”
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Attributed to Wilhelm Wundt:
“Voluntary attention is the foundation of mental life.”
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Attributed to Wilhelm Wundt:
“Folk psychology is the study of the higher mental products of communities.”
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Attributed to Wilhelm Wundt:
“All inner experience is a process; nothing in the mind is at rest.”
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“In Aristotle the mind , regarded as the principle of life, divides into nutrition, sensation, and faculty of thought, corresponding to the inner most important stages in the succession of vital phenomena.”
p. 22 -
“We call that psychical process, which is operative in the clear perception of a narrow region of the content of consciousness , attention .”
p. 16 -
“The whole task of psychology can therefore be summed up in these two problems : (1) What are the elements of consciousness ? (2) What combinations do these elements undergo and what laws govern these combinations ?”
p. 44; Cited in: Stephen Kosslyn . Image and Mind. 1980, p. 438