Alfred Binet

“It is necessary to protect oneself from over exaggeration; one must not suppose that there exists, even in the realm of partial memory, an absolutely pure auditory type; real life does not make such schemas... In reality, when one says that a person belongs to the auditory type... one wants to say simply that with regard to that person the auditory memory is preponderant.”

“It seems to me that people of talent and of genius serve better than average examples for making us understand the laws of character, because they present more extreme traits.”

“Since we seek to know what is the physical phenomenon we perceive, we must first enunciate this proposition, which will govern the whole of our discussion: to wit— Of the outer world we know nothing except our sensations.”

“The world is but an assembly of present, past, and possible sensations; the affair of science is to analyze and co-ordinate them by separating their accidental from their constant relations.”

“We are, for the rest, so wrapped up in sensations that none of our boldest conceptions can break through the circle.”

“The mechanical conception of the universe is nothing but naïve realism.”

“When making the analysis of matter we impliedly admitted two propositions: first, that sensation is the tertium quid which is interposed between the excitant of our sensory nerves and ourselves; secondly, that the aggregate of our sensations is all we can know of the outer world, so that it is correct to define this last as the collection of our present, past, and possible sensations.”

“Mind and matter brought down to the essential, to the consciousness and its object, form a natural whole, and the difficulty does not consist in uniting but in separating them.”

“"Never!" What a strong word! A few modern philosophers seem to lend their moral approval to these deplorable verdicts when they assert that an individual's intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity that cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism. We shall attempt to prove that it is without foundation.”

“Comprehension, inventiveness, direction, and criticism: intelligence is contained in these four words.”