Johann Friedrich Herbart

“In every page of David Hume, there is more to be learned than from Hegel's, Herbart's and Schleiermacher's complete philosophical works.”

“Johann Herbart’s work on education and particularly mathematical psychology influenced me. I think mathematics is the pure instance of construct functioning—the model of human behaviour.”

“Leibniz foreshadowed the entire doctrine of the unconscious, but Herbart actually began it. Wundt was to appeal first to unconscious inference in order to explain perception, and then to apperception. Fechner was to take from Herbart the notion of the measurement of the magnitude...”

“It is of course a familiar precept that the teacher must try to arouse the interest of his pupils in all that he teaches. However, this precept is generally meant and understood to denote the idea that learning is the end and interest the means to attain it. I wish to reverse that relationship. Learning must serve the purpose of creating interest. Learning is transient, but interest must be lifelong.”

“The intention with which the educator is to approach his work, this practical reflection, provisionally detailed down to the measures which our present state of knowledge suggests we should choose, is to my mind the first half of pedagogics. But there must be a second in which the possibility of education is theoretically explained and presented with its limitations in the light of changing circumstances.”