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William James Quotes - Page 28

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

When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries.

When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries.

Bipolar, Genius, Kind

William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.29, Library of America

I don't see how an epigram, being a bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ.

Blue, Introduction, Epigrams

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

Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists.

Interesting, May, Becoming

William James (2014). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology; And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.69, BookRix

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible ... faith is the readiness to act in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified to us in advance.

Mean, Issues, Doubt

William James (1956). “The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, and Human Immortality”, p.90, Courier Corporation

Voices of the glorified urge us onward. They who have passed from the semblances of time to the realities of eternity call upon us to advance. The rest that awaits us invites us forward. We do not pine for our rest before God wills it. We long for no inglorious rest. We are thankful rather for the invaluable training of difficulty, the loving discipline of danger and strife. Yet in the midst of it all the prospect of rest invites us heavenward. Through all, and above all, God cries, "Go forward!" "Come up higher!

Reality, Voice, Discipline

"Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 564, 1895.

No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed.

Punishment, Political, Politics

William James (2012). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.293, Courier Corporation

Both thought and feeling are determinants of conduct, and the same conduct may be determined either by feeling or by thought.

Feelings, May, Determined

William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.451, Library of America

If WE claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp.

Men, Statistics, Claims

William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.304, Library of America

So long as antimilitarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to realize the full inwardness of the situation.

War, Long, Might

William James (2016). “William James: Essays and Lectures”, p.308, Routledge

Of course, this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become permanent drunkards by so may separate drinks, so we become saints in the moral, and authorities and experts in the practical and scientific spheres, by so many separate acts and hours of work. Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working day, he may safely leave the final result to itself.

Anxiety, Experts, Saint

William James (2017). “Habit”, p.22, Read Books Ltd

Once you accept an idea, it's an idea whose time has come.

Ideas, Accepting, Daring

I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave.

Philosophy, Order, Medicine

Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes; spiritualism means theaffirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting loose of hope.

Mean, Cutting, Order

William James (2012). “Pragmatism”, p.41, Courier Corporation

The man whose acquisitions stick is the man who is always achieving and advancing whilst his neighbors, spending most of their time in relearning what they once knew but have forgotten, simply hold their own.

Learning, Men, Sticks

William James (1961). “Psychology: The Briefer Course”, p.160, Courier Corporation

General scepticism is the live mental attitude of refusing to conclude. It is a permanent torpor of the will, renewing itself in detail towards each successive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic than you can kill off obstinacy or practical joking.

Attitude, Details, Logic

William James (2015). “The Meaning of Truth: Human Understanding”, p.75, 谷月社

As long as there are postmen, life will have zest.

Zest, Long, Expectations

"The Brooklyn man who wrote to Gadhafi" by Moni Basu, www.cnn.com. November 14, 2011.

... the intellect, everywhere invasive, shows everywhere its shallowing effect.

Intellect, Shows, Effects

William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.449, Library of America

The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stoodthere from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.

Block, Thoughtful, Thinking

William James (2012). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.288, Courier Corporation

You perceive now, my friends, what your general or abstract duty is as teachers. Although you have to generate in your pupils a large stock of ideas, any one of which may be inhibitory, yet you must also see to it that no habitual hesitancy or paralysis of the will ensues, and that the pupil still retains his power of vigorous action.

Teacher, Philosophy, Educational

William James (1983). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.108, Harvard University Press

The exercise of voluntary attention in the schoolroom must therefore be counted one of the most important points of training that take place there; and the first-rate teacher, by the keenness of the remoter interests which he is able to awaken, will provide abundant opportunities for its occurrence.

Teacher, Philosophy, Educational

William James (1983). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.111, Harvard University Press

Compared with men, it is probable that brutes neither attend to abstract characters, nor have associations by similarity. Their thoughts probably pass from one concrete object to its habitual concrete successor far more uniformly than is the case with us. In other words, their associations of ideas are almost exclusively by contiguity. So far, however, as any brute might think by abstract characters instead of by association of con cretes, he would have to be admitted to be a reasoner in the true human sense. How far this may take place is quite uncertain.

Character, Men, Thinking

When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness.

Reality, Broken, Concepts

William James (1977). “A Pluralistic Universe”, p.116, Harvard University Press

At bottom, the whole concern of religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe.

Wise, Wisdom, Acceptance

William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.41, Courier Corporation

Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains; under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core.

Life, Real, Culture

'McClure's Magazine' February 1908, p. 422

You do not sing because you're happy, you're happy because you sing.

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