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William James Quotes - Page 24

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Most men's friendships are too inarticulate.

Most men's friendships are too inarticulate.

Men, Inarticulate

The simplest rudiment of mystical experience would seem to be that deepened sense of the significance of a maxim or formula which occasionally sweeps over one.

Mystical Experiences, Natural, Significance

William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature”, p.129, Xist Publishing

Conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity.

Spiritual, Children, Maturity

Dr. William James (2013). “The William James Reader”, p.482, Simon and Schuster

All natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it.

Happiness, Contradiction, Natural

William James, Robert D Richardson (2010). “The Heart of William James”, p.219, Harvard University Press

The states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the Soul to exist; but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle of unity is superfluous.

Soul, Psychology, Unity

William James (1984). “Psychology, Briefer Course”, p.181, Harvard University Press

Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.

Quality, Pay, Supreme

William James (1987). “Essays, Comments, and Reviews”, p.105, Harvard University Press

In my individual heart I fully believe my faith is as robust as yours. The trouble with your robust and full bodied faiths, however, is, that they begin to cut each others throats too soon, and for getting on in the world and establishing a modus vivendi these pestilential refinements and reasonablenesses and moderations have to creep in.

Believe, Heart, Cutting

Letter to John Jay Chapman, April 5, 1897.

But petitional prayer is only one department of prayer; and if we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every kind of inward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine, we can easily see that scientific criticism leaves it untouched. Prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion.

Prayer, Essence, Soul

William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature”, p.151, Xist Publishing

I am well aware how odd it must seem to some of you to hear me say that an idea is true so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives

Truth, Believe, Ideas

William James (2012). “Pragmatism”, p.30, Courier Corporation

However inadequate our ideas of causal efficacy may be, we are less wide of the mark when we say that our ideas and feelings have it, than the Automatists are when they say they haven't it. As in the night all cats are gray, so in the darkness of metaphysical criticism all causes are obscure. But one has no right to pull the pall over the psychic half of the subject only . . . whilst in the same breath one dogmatizes about material causation as if Hume, Kant, and Lotze had never been born.

Cat, Night, Ideas

William James (2007). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.137, Cosimo, Inc.

The "through-and-through" universe seems to suffocate me with its infallible impeccable all-pervasiveness. Its necessity , with no possibilities; its relations, with no subjects, make me feel as if I had entered into a contract with no reserved rights ... It seems too buttoned-up and white-chokered and clean-shaven a thing to speak for the vast slow-breathing unconscious Kosmos with its dread abysses and its unknown tides.

Breathing, White, Rights

"Essays in Radical Empiricism". Book by William James, Ch. 12 : Absolutism and Empiricism, 1912.

To know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teacher.

Teacher, Educational, Philosophy

William James (1983). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.16, Harvard University Press

The suspicion is in the air nowadays that the superiority of one of our formulas to another may not consist so much in its literal 'objectivity,' as in subjective qualities like its usefulness, its 'elegance,' or its congruity with our residual beliefs

Truth, Air, Objectivity

William James (2000). “Pragmatism and Other Writings”, p.199, Penguin

We hear the words we have spoken, feel our own blow as we give it, or read in the bystander's eyes the success or failure of our conduct.

Teaching, Eye, Bystanders

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

Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine. Since the relation may be either moral, physical, or ritual, it is evident that out of religion in the sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow.

Philosophy, Mean, Men

William James, John Dewey, John M. Capps, Donald Capps (2005). “James and Dewey on Belief and Experience”, p.114, University of Illinois Press

There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.

Philosophical, Eye, Reality

Dr. William James (2013). “The William James Reader”, p.429, Simon and Schuster

To know an object is to lead to it through a context which the world provides

Truth, World, Objects

Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet.

Skulls, Evil, Healthy

William James (1985). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.119, Harvard University Press

Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.

Gone, Becoming, Instant

William James (1961). “Psychology: The Briefer Course”, p.147, Courier Corporation

The mind of your own enemy, the pupil, is working away from you, as keenly and eagerly as is the mind of the commander on the other side from the scientific general. Just what the respective enemies want and think, and what they know or do not know, are as hard things for the teachers as for the general to find out.

Teacher, Thinking, Mind

William James (2013). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.4, Courier Corporation

The thinker philosophizes as the lover loves. Even were the consequences not only useless but harmful, he must obey his impulse.

Useless, Lovers, Impulse

It would probably astound each of them beyond measure to be let into his neighbor's mind and to find how different the scenery there was from that in his own.

Mind, Different, Neighbor

"Psychology: The Briefer Course".

[There are, in us] possibilities that take our breath away, and show a world wider than either physics or philistine ethics can imagine. Here is a world in which all is well, in spite of certain forms of death, death of hope, death of strength, death of responsibility, of fear and wrong, death of everything that paganism, naturalism and legalism pin their trust on.

Responsibility, World, Paganism

William James, Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, Ignas K. Skrupskelis (1982). “Essays in Religion and Morality”, p.128, Harvard University Press

I am tired of the position of the dried-up critic and doubter. The believer is the true full man. (from a biography of James by Robert D. Richardson)

Tired, Men, Biographies

If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn't seek to show that no crows are; it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white.

Law, White, Upset

William James (1986). “Essays in Psychical Research”, p.131, Harvard University Press

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