Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Ralph Gerard, fully Ralph Waldo Gerard

American Neurophysiologist and Behavioral Scientist

"How to teach rigor while preserving imagination is an unsolved challenge to education."

"Reason can answer questions, but imagination has to ask them. "

"No age or time of life, no position or circumstance, has a monopoly on success. Any age is the right age to start doing!"

"There is first the problem of acquiring content, which is learning. There is another problem of acquiring learning skills, which is not merely learning, but learning to learn, not velocity, but acceleration. Learning to learn is one of the great inventions of living things. It is tremendously important. It makes evolution, biological as well as social, go faster. And it involves the development of the individual."

"Activity of the nervous system improves the capacity for activity, just as exercising a muscle makes it stronger."