Skip to content

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.

— Wilhelm Wundt An Introduction to Psychology (1912)

Another quote →

More quotes by Wilhelm Wundt

We call that psychical process, which is operative in the clear perception of a narrow region of the content of consciousness, attention.

An Introduction to Psychology (1912)

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.

There are no permanent ideas that return again and disappear again.

The results of ethnic psychology constitute... our chief source of information regarding the general psychology of the complex mental processes.

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.

All Wilhelm Wundt quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Wilhelm Wundt (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.