William James Quotes About Consciousness

Quotes about: Consciousness

• Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make very small use of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger.

  William James

  Inspirational, Life, Moving

  Letter toWincenty Lutoslawski, 6 May 1906

• 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.

  William James

  Education, World, Consciousness

  William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.497, Booklassic

• The gist of the matter is this: Every impression that comes in from without, be it a sentence which we hear, an object of vision, or an effluvium which assails our nose, no sooner enters our consciousness than it is drafted off in some determinate direction or other, making connection with the other materials already there, and finally producing what we call our reaction. The particular connections it strikes into are determined by our past experiences and the 'associations' of the present sort of impression with them.

  William James

  Philosophy, Educational, Past

  William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.123, Nuvision Pubns

• 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.

  William James

  Lying, Special, Different

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

• 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.

  William James

  Views, Brain, Unbroken

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

• Consciousness... does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life. Source of the expression 'stream of consciousness'.

  William James

  Science, Expression, Talking

  The Principles of Psychology vol. 1, ch. 9 (1890).

• Man lives in only one small room of the enormous house of his consciousness.

  William James

  Men, Thinking, Small Rooms

• It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call something there, more deep and more general than any of the special and particular senses by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed.

  William James

  Reality, Psychology, Feelings

  William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.58, Courier Corporation

• Volition . . . takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and depends on our having a complex field of consciousness.

  William James

  Philosophy, Educational, Ideas

  William James (1983). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.104, Harvard University Press

• 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.

  William James

  Other Worlds, Two, Filters

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

• There is but one indefectibly certain truth , and that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves standing, the truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists.

  William James

  Consciousness, Certain, Phenomenon

  William James (2000). “Pragmatism and Other Writings”, p.260, Penguin

• The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that it is always interested more in one part of its object than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks.

  William James

  Thinking, Attention, Lasts

  William James, (2013). “The Principles Of Psychology -”, p.233, Read Books Ltd

• As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different pace of its parts. Like a bird 's life, it seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings.

  William James

  Views, Bird, Different

  William James (2012). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.243, Courier Corporation

• 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.

  William James

  Might, Sake, Study

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

• The total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but mutually ignore each other.

  William James

  Splits, May, Consciousness

  William James, Robert D Richardson (2010). “The Heart of William James”, p.93, Harvard University Press

• Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.

  William James

  Regret, Men, Agents

• Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting.

  William James

  Failure, Men, Secret

  William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.129, Library of America

• 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.

  William James

  Opinion, Consciousness, Mystic

  William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.387, Courier Corporation

• 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.

  William James

  Soul, Psychology, Unity

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

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