A Quote by William James

The teacher's prime concern should be to ingrain into the pupil that assortment of habits that shall be most useful to him throughout life. Education is for behavior, and habits are the stuff of which behavior consists.

William James

Quote Topics

Behavior Concern Consists Education Habits Him Life Most Prime Pupil Shall Should Stuff Teacher Throughout Useful Which

Quote Author

William James
American - Philosopher
January 11, 1842 - August 26, 1910

Many instructional arrangements seem "contrived," but there is nothing wrong with that. It is the teacher's function to contrive conditions under which students learn. It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student's life.

B. F. Skinner

Character is the sum of one's good habits (virtues) and bad habits (vices). These habits mark us and affect the ways in which we respond to life's events and challenges. Our character is our profile of habits and dispositions to act in certain ways.

Thomas Lickona

The life-history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities.

Ruth Benedict

Often nothing keeps the pupil on the move but his faith in his teacher, whose mastery is now beginning to dawn on him .... How far the pupil will go is not the concern of the teacher and master. Hardly has he shown him the right way when he must let him go on alone. There is only one thing more he can do to help him endure his loneliness: he turns him away from himself, from the Master, by exhorting him to go further than he himself has done, and to "climb on the shoulders of his teacher."

Eugen Herrigel

Good character consists of knowing the good, desiring the good, and doing the good habits of the mind, habits of the heart, and habits of action.

Thomas Lickona

Whatever your present situation, I assure you that you are not your habits. You can replace old patterns of self-defeating behavior with new patterns, new habits of the effectiveness, happiness and trust-based relationships.

Stephen Covey

If you want to become physically stronger, you'll need healthy habits - like going to the gym. You'll also have to give up unhealthy habits - like eating junk food. Building mental strength requires healthy habits - like practicing gratitude - while also giving up unhealthy behavior, like giving up after the first failure.

Amy Morin

Habits are the shorthand of behavior.

Julie Henderson

When most individuals or most companies are talking about trying to create healthy habits, the key is to identify which habit or habits seem most important.

Charles Duhigg

It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student's life.

B. F. Skinner

Every grown-up man consists wholly of habits, although he is often unaware of it and even denies having any habits at all.

G. I. Gurdjieff

I believe that the teacher's place and work in the school is to be interpreted from this same basis. The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences.

John Dewey

It is the inevitable effect of religion on public policy that makes it a matter of public concern. Advocates of religiosity extol the virtues or moral habits that religion is supposed to instill in us. But we should be equally concerned with the intellectual habits it discourages.

Wendy Kaminer

It seems, in theory, that I should be able to control at least a few of my bad habits. The problem is that my habits make me depressed, and the depression makes me want to indulge my habits and so I do. There isn't any solution to this.

John S. Hall

Once in a while, I still witness occasionally sexist behavior and comments from men (which experience has taught me you should always deflect with humour rather than anger). Old habits die hard, after all, and it's unrealistic to expect dinosaurs to fall silent overnight.