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William James Quotes - Page 14

All Quotes Acceptance Achievement Adversity Affection Age Alcohol Anxiety Apology Appreciation Art Attitude Authority Belief Business Challenges Change Character Children Choices College Common Sense Community Consciousness Courage Creativity Criticism Design Desire Destiny Doubt Earth Education Effort Encouragement Energy Ethics Evil Excellence Exercise Experience Failing Failure Faith Fate Fear Feelings Fighting Free Will Freedom Friendship Genius Giving Giving Up Glory God Happiness Hate Heart Heroism History Holiday Honesty Human Nature Imagination Impulse Individuality Inspiration Inspirational Knowledge Laughter Leadership Learning Letting Go Life Literature Logic Loss Love Lying Making A Difference Memories Military Motivation Motivational Opportunity Optimism Pain Passion Past Perception Perseverance Personality Perspective Philosophy Pleasure Politics Positive Positive Thinking Prayer Procrastination Psychology Purpose Quality Reading Reality Reflection Religion Responsibility Risk Running Science Self Esteem Self Love Society Soul Stress Struggle Study Success Suffering Teaching Today Truth Virtue Vision Wall War Weakness Wealth Wisdom Worry

Deepest principle of human nature is to be appreciated.

Deepest principle of human nature is to be appreciated.

Principles, Appreciated, Human Nature

There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.

Needs, Way, Companionship

William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.269, Booklassic

From the Vedas we learn a practical art of surgery, medicine, music, house building under which mechanized art is included. They are encyclopedia of every aspect of life, culture, religion, science, ethics, law, cosmology and meteorology.

Art, Law, Culture Religion

As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate!

Reading, Book, Trying

True to her inveterate habit, rationalism reverts to 'principles,' and thinks that when an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular solution.

Thinking, Principles, Habit

William James (2013). “Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (New Thought Edition - Secret Library)”, p.105, Lulu Press, Inc

Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.

History, Grease, Mind

William James (2015). “Pragmatism and the Conception of Thruth”, p.134, William James

'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.

Knowledge, Science, Facts

William James (2012). “The Will to Believe and Human Immortality”, p.271, Courier Corporation

Act in earnest and you will become earnest in all you do.

Truth, Honesty, Integrity

We [may] answer the question: "Why is snow white?" by saying, "For the same reason that soap-suds or whipped eggs are white"-in other words, instead of giving the reason for a fact, we give another example of the same fact. This offering a similar instance, instead of a reason, has often been criticised as one of the forms of logical depravity in men. But manifestly it is not a perverse act of thought, but only an incomplete one. Furnishing parallel cases is the necessary first step towards abstracting the reason imbedded in them all.

Science, Men, Offering

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

Philosophical, Quality, Ethics

William James (2000). “Pragmatism and Other Writings”, p.242, Penguin

The gist of the matter is this: Every impression that comes in from without, be it a sentence which we hear, an object of vision, or an effluvium which assails our nose, no sooner enters our consciousness than it is drafted off in some determinate direction or other, making connection with the other materials already there, and finally producing what we call our reaction. The particular connections it strikes into are determined by our past experiences and the 'associations' of the present sort of impression with them.

Philosophy, Educational, Past

William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.123, Nuvision Pubns

All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.

Philosophic, Ideals, Altars

The Dilemma of Determinism" (1884)

Truth happens to an idea

Truth, Ideas, Happens

Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking Lecture 6 (1907)

All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.

Science, Past, Taught Us

William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.119, 谷月社

Our acts of voluntary attending, as brief and fitful as they are, are nevertheless momentous and critical, determining us, as they do, to higher or lower destinies.

Destiny, Higher, Critical

William James (2013). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.92, Courier Corporation

Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting.

Failure, Men, Secret

William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.129, Library of America

Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.

Truth, Ideas, Events

Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking Lecture 6 (1907)

The word 'cause' is an altar to an unknown god.

Causes, Altars

Social evolution is a resultant of the interaction of two wholly distinct factors: the individual ... bearing all the power of initiative and origination in his hands; and, second, the social environment with its power of adopting or rejecting both him and his gifts. Both factors are essential to change. The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.

Hands, Two, Community

William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.144, 谷月社

I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are IMPOSSIBLE.

Believe, Science, Deception

William James (1986). “Essays in Psychical Research”, p.22, Harvard University Press

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

Life, Faith, Optimism

William James (1956). “The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, and Human Immortality”, p.59, Courier Corporation

In teaching, you must simply work your pupil into such a state of interest in what you are going to teach him that every other object of attention is banished from his mind; then reveal it to him so impressively that he will remember the occasion to his dying day; and finally fill him with devouring curiosity to know what the next steps in connection with the subject are.

Art, Teaching, Psychology

William James (1912). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”

The good or bad is not in the circumstance, but only in the mind...that encounters it.

Gratitude, Mind, Encounters

Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. ... From time immemorial war has been ... the supremely thrilling excitement.

War, Men, Thrill

There is a stream, a succession of states, or waves, or fields (or whatever you please to call them), of knowledge, of feeling, of desire, of deliberation, etc., that constantly pass and repass, and that constitute our inner life.

Educational, Philosophy, Feelings

William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.20, Nuvision Pubns

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