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William James Quotes - Page 17

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

In business for yourself, not by yourself.

In business for yourself, not by yourself.

Inspirational, Business, Philosophical

The first thing the intellect does with an object is to class it along with something else. But any object that is infinitely important to us and awakens our devotion feels to us also as if it must be sui generis and unique. Probably a crab would be filled with a sense of personal outrage if it could hear us class it without ado or apology as a crustacean, and thus dispose of it. 'I am no such thing,' it would say; 'I am MYSELF, MYSELF alone.

Science, Apology, Unique

William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.9, Courier Corporation

We are all potentially such sick men. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison-inmates. And whenever we feel this, such a sense of the vanity of our voluntary career comes over us, that all our morality appears but as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as the hollowest substitute for that well-being that our lives ought to be grounded in, but alas! are not.

Life, Men, Vanity

"Essays in Religion and Morality".

A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.

Emotion, Humans, Nonentity

Dr. William James (2013). “What is an Emotion?”, p.8, Simon and Schuster

Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein.

Children, Science, Uprising

The Principles of Psychology vol. 1, ch. 4 (1890)

Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and co-ordinate with it

Truth, Truth Is, Categories

William James (2013). “Pragmatism: The Secret Edition - Open Your Heart to the Real Power and Magic of Living Faith and Let the Heaven Be in You, Go Deep Inside Yourself and Back, Feel the Crazy and Divine Love and Live for Your Dreams”, p.40, Lulu Press, Inc

We are proud of a human nature that could be so passionately extreme, but we shrink from advising others to follow the example.

Example, Proud, Human Nature

Dr. William James (2013). “The William James Reader”, p.595, Simon and Schuster

Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life.

Religious, Men, Religion

William James, John Dewey, John M. Capps, Donald Capps (2005). “James and Dewey on Belief and Experience”, p.115, University of Illinois Press

We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paying our way by what we are and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly - the more athletic trim, in short, the moral fighting shape.

Fighting, Attachment, Athletic

William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature”, p.124, Xist Publishing

Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose.

Purpose, Way, Particular

William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.47, 谷月社

The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own particular ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours.

Happiness, Society, Politics

Talks to Teachers (1899) "What makes a Life Significant?"

Our volitional habits depend, then, first, on what the stock of ideas is which we have; and, second, on the habitual coupling of the several ideas with action or inaction respectively.

Philosophy, Educational, Ideas

William James, Robert D Richardson (2010). “The Heart of William James”, p.124, Harvard University Press

A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock

Truth, Desire, Belief

William James, John Dewey, John M. Capps, Donald Capps (2005). “James and Dewey on Belief and Experience”, p.140, University of Illinois Press

With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.

Good Intentions, Hell, Intention

William James (1950). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.125, Courier Corporation

Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.

Lying, Special, Different

William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.349, Library of America

Life feels like a real fight - as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem.

Real, Fighting, Faithfulness

William James (1956). “The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, and Human Immortality”, p.61, Courier Corporation

The deepest hunger in human beings is the desire to be appreciated.

Friendship, Desire, Appreciated

Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's Utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torment, what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?

Lonely, Independent, Science

William James (2012). “The Will to Believe and Human Immortality”, p.133, Courier Corporation

If you want to change your life, do it flamboyantly and start immediately.

Want, Changing Your Life, Ifs

The entire routine of our memorized acquisitions, for example, is a consequence of nothing but the Law of Contiguity. The words of a poem, the formulas of trigonometry, the facts of history, the properties of material things, are all known to us as definite systems or groups of objects which cohere in an order fixed by innumerable iterations, and of which any one part reminds us of the others.

Philosophy, Educational, Order

"Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals".

As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.

Sympathy, Lying, Justice

William James (1985). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.284, Harvard University Press

Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.

People, Democracy, Genius

William James (2012). “Memories and Studies”, p.33, The Floating Press

... if we take the universe of 'fitting,' countless coats 'fit' backs, and countless boots 'fit' feet, on which they are not practically fitted; countless stones 'fit' gaps in walls into which no one seeks to fit them actually. In the same way countless opinions 'fit' realities, and countless truths are valid, tho no thinker ever thinks them.

Wall, Truth, Reality

William James (2015). “The Meaning of Truth: Human Understanding”, p.77, 谷月社

The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist, and that those other worlds must contain experiences which have a meaning for our life also; and that although in the main their experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet the two become continuous at certain points, and higher energies filter in.

Other Worlds, Two, Filters

William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.463, Library of America

Much of what we call evil is due entirely to the way men take the phenomenon. It can so often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer's inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight; its string can so often depart and turn into a relish when, after vainly seeking to shun it, we agree to face about and bear it.

Courage, Attitude, Fear

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