"If, then, you wish to insure the..." - Quote by William James
If, then, you wish to insure the interest of your pupils, there is only one way to do it; and that is to make certain that they have something in their minds to attend with, when you begin to talk. That something can consist in nothing but a previous lot of ideas already interesting in themselves, and of such a nature that the incoming novel objects which you present can dovetail into them and form with them some kind of a logically associated or systematic whole.
More by William James
“The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.”
“We divert our attention from disease and death as much as we can; the slaughterhouses are huddled out of sight and never mentioned, so that the world we recognize officially in literature and in society is a poetic fiction far handsomer, cleaner and better than the world that really is.”
“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.”
More on Teaching
“The way that I teach now is just by listening. I listen a lot.”
“How teach again, however, what has been taught correctly and incorrectly learned a thousand thousand times, throughout the millenniums of mankind's prudent folly? That is the hero's ultimate difficult task.”
“I'm trying to teach people of all ages to, number one: how to criticize, how to offer creative analysis on top of that, how to try to build things in a new direction and how to compliment people when the thing gets done.”
More on Learning
“I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.”
“Why should any of these things that happen externally distract thee? Give thyself leisure to learn some good thing: cease roving to and fro.”
“I have not failed 10,000 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work.”