Hermann Ebbinghaus

“The nonsense material, just described, offers many advantages for a quantitative investigation of memory.”

“The vanished mental states give proof of their continued existence even if they themselves do not return to consciousness at all.”

“Psychology has a long past, but only a short history.”

“With any considerable number of repetitions, a suitable distribution of them over a space of time is decidedly more advantageous than the massing of them at a single time.”

“Mental states of every kind... which were at one time present in consciousness and then have disappeared from it, have not with their disappearance absolutely ceased to exist.”

“The amount of retention in the case of the verse-series is many times greater than in the case of the nonsense-syllables.”

“Our waking consciousness is a stage of which we are not the masters.”

“What we have learned and experienced is not wiped out from our memory, so that no trace of it is left behind.”

“Left to itself, every mental content gradually loses its capacity for being revived, or at least suffers loss in this capacity.”