William James Quotes About Metaphysics

Quotes about: Metaphysics

• A little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians.

  William James

  Pain, Spring, Loss

  William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.140, Courier Corporation

• Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

  William James

  Mean, Thinking, Effort

  1890 The Principles of Psychology, ch.6.

• 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.

  William James

  Stopping, Unrest, World

  William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.1002, Library of America

• 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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