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William James Quotes - Page 15

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

Asceticism may be a mere expression of organic hardihood, disgusted with too much ease.

Asceticism may be a mere expression of organic hardihood, disgusted with too much ease.

Expression, Asceticism, Ease

William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.272, Library of America

The greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes.

Reflection, Pope, Instinct

William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.12, 谷月社

But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them theyare sure to combine.

Facts, Enough, Ifs

Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs; and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way.

Philosophical, Passion, Men

William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.61, 谷月社

Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?

Truth, Ideas, Differences

William James (2012). “Pragmatism”, p.77, Courier Corporation

Man is essentially the imitative animal. His whole educabilityand in fact the whole history of civilization depend on this trait, which his strong tendencies to rivalry, jealousy, and acquisitiveness reinforce.

Strong, Animal, Men

1890 The Principles of Psychology, ch.24.

As the brain-changes are continuous, so do all these consciousnesses melt into each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but one protracted consciousness, one unbroken stream.

Views, Brain, Unbroken

"The Principles of Psychology". Book by William James, 1890.

The study a posteriori of the distribution of consciousness shows it to be exactly such as we might expect in an organ added for the sake of steering a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself.

Might, Sake, Study

William James (2012). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.144, Courier Corporation

We believe as much as we can. We would believe everything if we could.

Believe, Ifs

William James (2012). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.299, Courier Corporation

Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system

Truth, Credit, Facts

William James (2015). “Pragmatism and the Conception of Thruth”, p.166, William James

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.

Philosophical, Understanding, Abnormal

It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association

Educational, Philosophy, Literature

William James (2013). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.42, Courier Corporation

If, then, you wish to insure the interest of your pupils, there is only one way to do it; and that is to make certain that they have something in their minds to attend with, when you begin to talk. That something can consist in nothing but a previous lot of ideas already interesting in themselves, and of such a nature that the incoming novel objects which you present can dovetail into them and form with them some kind of a logically associated or systematic whole.

Philosophy, Educational, Ideas

William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.80, Nuvision Pubns

One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.

Forgiveness, Heart, Wrestling

William James, Robert D Richardson (2010). “The Heart of William James”, p.132, Harvard University Press

We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with us, ready at any moment to burst into flame, the smoldering and sinister traits of character by means of which they lived through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves unharmed.

Character, Mean, Successful

William James (1918). “The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 2”, p.410, Courier Corporation

Despair lames most people, but it wakes others fully up.

People, Despair

William James, Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, Ignas K. Skrupskelis (1982). “Essays in Religion and Morality”, p.153, Harvard University Press

To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.

Mean, Awareness, Conscious

Dr. William James (2013). “The William James Reader”, p.72, Simon and Schuster

What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!

Men, Rewards And Recognition, Facts

William James (2008). “The Letters of William James”, Cosimo, Inc.

The difference between objective and subjective extension is one of relation to a context solely.

Differences, Relation, Extensions

William James (2015). “Radical Empiricism: Human Understanding”, p.12, 谷月社

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.

Teacher, Stuff, Behavior

William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.57, Nuvision Pubns

A great idea goes through three stages on its way to acceptance: 1) it is dismissed as nonsense, 2) it is acknowledged as true, but insignificant, 3) finally, it is seen to be important, but not really anything new.

Acceptance, Ideas, Important

It is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies, wealth is better than poverty and ought to be chosen. But wealth does this in only a portion of the actual cases. Elsewhere the desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption. There must be thousands of conjunctures in which a wealth-bound man must be a slave, whilst a man for whom poverty has no terrors becomes a freeman.

Exercise, Men, Giving

William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.368, Courier Corporation

Why may we not be in the universe, as our dogs and cats are in our drawingrooms and libraries?

Dog, Cat, Library

William James (1973). “William James on Psychical Research”, Augustus m Kelley Pubs

...By far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear witness for them.

Science, Abuse, Usual

William James (2015). “Pragmatism: Human Understanding”, p.22, 谷月社

We ought, all of us, to realize each other in this intense, pathetic, and important way. If you say that this is absurd, and that we cannot be in love with everyone at once, I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people's lives; and that such persons know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big.

Life, Heart, People

"Essays on Faith and Morals".

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