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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. But if he chances to set out purposely to learn it backwards, he will probably accomplish this in noticeably shorter time than was the case in the previous learning in the customary order.

— Hermann Ebbinghaus

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More quotes by Hermann Ebbinghaus

Psychology has a long past, but only a short history.

Edwin Boring (1929)

The foreseeing of our attention is the will to give attention, is voluntary attention.

The constant flux and caprice of mental events do not admit of the establishment of stable experimental conditions.

Mental events, it is said, are not passive happenings but the acts of a subject.

The schoolboy doesn't force himself to learn his vocabularies and rules altogether at night, but knows that he must impress them again in the morning.

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