William James Quotes
We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and as carefully guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous.
In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly.
Mental fire is what won't burn real sticks; mental water is what won't necessarily (though of course it may) put out even a mentalfire.
The instant field of the present is at all times what I call the 'pure' experience. It is only virtually or potentially either object or subject as yet.
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.
Volition . . . takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and depends on our having a complex field of consciousness.
On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.
Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism.
So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.
Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this world's life
So far war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until an equivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war must have its way.
If any one phrase could gather its (religion's) universal message, that phrase would be, - All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may suggest.
Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. Not through mere perversity do men run after it.
It is only in the lonely emergencies of life that our creed is tested: then routine maxims fail, and we fall back on our gods.
In the last analysis, then, we believe that we all know and think about and talk about the same world because we believe our PERCEPTS are possessed by us in common
Man, biologically considered ... is simply the most formidable of all beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own kind.
Science herself consults her heart when she lays it down that the infinite ascertainment of fact and correction of false belief are the supreme goods for man.
The unrest which keeps the never stopping clock of metaphysics going is the thought that the nonexistence of this world is just as possible as its existence.
The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example to work on others as it may.
The university most worthy of rational admiration is that one in which your lonely thinker can feel himself lonely, most positively furthered, and most richly fed
The thinker philosophizes as the lover loves. Even were the consequences not only useless but harmful, he must obey his impulse.
The belief in free-will is not in the least incompatible with the belief in Providence, provided you do not restrict the Providence to fulminating nothing but fatal decrees.
True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot
To some of us the thought of God is like a sort of quiet music playing in the background of the mind.
To be fertile in hypotheses is the first perquisite of creativity and to be willing to throw them away the moment experience contradicts them is the next.
Great indeed is Fear; but it is not, as our military enthusiasts believe and try to make us believe, the only stimulus known for awakening the higher ranges of men's spiritual energy.
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.
... I am the same personal being who in old times upon the Earth had those experiences.
Between what a man calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw. We feel and act about certain things that are ours very much as we feel and act about ourselves.
The war-function has grasped us so far; but the constructive interests may some day seem no less imperative, and impose on the individual a hardly lighter burden.
The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.
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.
Results should not be too voluntarily aimed at or too busily thought of. They are sure to float up of their own accord from a long enough daily work at a given matter.
The first thing that intellect does with an object is to class it with something else.
Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists.
The prescription is that the subject must be made to show new aspects of itself; to prompt new questions; in a word, to change. From an unchanging subject the attention inevitably wanders away.
How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well?
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.