William James Quotes About Opinions

Quotes about: Opinions

• Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions.

  William James

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Men

  William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.61, 谷月社

• To begin with, our knowledge grows in spots. The spots may be large or small, but the knowledge ever grows all over... What you first gain from them is probably a small amount of new information, a few new definitions, or distinctions, or points of view. But while these special ideas are being added, the rest of your knowledge stands still, and only gradually will you 'line up' your previous opinions with the novelties I am trying to instil, and modify to some slight degree their mass.

  William James

  Educational, Ideas, Views

  "Writings, 1902-1910".

• The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of the world.

  William James

  Art, Philosophy, Men

  William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.135, Booklassic

• A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock

  William James

  Truth, Desire, Belief

  William James, John Dewey, John M. Capps, Donald Capps (2005). “James and Dewey on Belief and Experience”, p.140, University of Illinois Press

• The most violent revolutions in an individuals beliefs leave most of his old order standing. Time and space, cause and effect, nature and history, and ones own biography remain untouched. New truth is always a go-between, a smoother-over of transitions. It marries old opinion to new fact so as ever to show a minimum of jolt, a maximum of continuity.

  William James

  Order, Space, Biographies

  William James (2015). “Pragmatism and the Conception of Thruth”, p.50, William James

• When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.

  William James

  Children, Men, Thinking

  William James (1985). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.293, Harvard University Press

• ... if we take the universe of 'fitting,' countless coats 'fit' backs, and countless boots 'fit' feet, on which they are not practically fitted; countless stones 'fit' gaps in walls into which no one seeks to fit them actually. In the same way countless opinions 'fit' realities, and countless truths are valid, tho no thinker ever thinks them.

  William James

  Wall, Truth, Reality

  William James (2015). “The Meaning of Truth: Human Understanding”, p.77, 谷月社

• Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs; and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way.

  William James

  Philosophical, Passion, Men

  William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.61, 谷月社

• 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

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