Hugo Munsterberg quotes

Ethics could teach us only those purposes and ideals. If the teachers seeks insight into the means by which the aim can be reached, into the facts by which the child can be molded, his way must lead from ethics to psychology. (...) Water flows downhill, anyhow, but to bring the water uphill hydraulic forces are indeed necessary. To overcome nature and instead to prepare for a life of ideals, to inhibit personal desires and instead to learn to serve the higher purposes indeed demands most serious and most systematic efforts. It is the teachers' task to make these efforts with all his best knowledge of mind and body, of social and of cultural values. (Hugo Munsterberg)
Our aim is to sketch the outlines of a new science which is to intermediate between the modern laboratory psychology and the problems of economics: the psychological experiment is systematically to be placed at the service of commerce and industry. View quote
Hugo Munsterberg
The inner labor, the inner values, and the inner difficulties and frictions are too often unknown to those who decide for a vocation, and they are unable to correlate those essential factors of the life-calling with all that nature by inheritance, and society by surroundings and training, have planted and developed in their minds. View quote
Hugo Munsterberg
Only the subtle psychological individual analysis can overcome the superficial prejudices of group psychology. View quote
Hugo Munsterberg
The theorists of scientific management seem to think that the most subtle methods are indispensable for physical measurements, but for psychological inquiry nothing but a kind of intuition is necessary. View quote
Hugo Munsterberg
WE have placed our psychotechnical interest at the service of economic tasks... The purpose before us was to find for every economic occupation the best-fitted personality, both in the interest of economic success and in the interest of personal development. View quote
Hugo Munsterberg
The knowledge of nature and the mastery of nature have always belonged together. View quote
Hugo Munsterberg
Applied psychology can, therefore, speak the language of an exact science ill its own field, independent of economic opinions and debatable partisan interests. View quote
Hugo Munsterberg