William James Quotes About Psychology

Quotes about: Psychology

• Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

  William James

  Inspirational, Positive, Success

• Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.

  William James

  Teamwork, Men, Two

• Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.

  William James

  Love, Relationship, Marriage

• There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind of what you would like to be, and you keep and hold that picture there long enough, you will soon become exactly as you have been thinking.

  William James

  Military, Thinking, Law

• The general law is that no mental modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or followed by a bodily change.

  William James

  Philosophy, Law, Medicine

  William James (1950). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.5, Courier Corporation

• 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

• To know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teacher.

  William James

  Teacher, Educational, Philosophy

  William James (1983). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.16, Harvard University Press

• But when all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence and can make their exercises interesting, whilst others simply cannot. And psychology and general pedagogy here confess their failure, and hand things over to the deeper spring of human personality to conduct the task.

  William James

  Teacher, Philosophy, Spring

  William James (2013). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.53, Courier Corporation

• I wished by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her become one.

  William James

  Science, Psychology, Helping

  William James (1983). “Essays in Psychology”, p.270, Harvard University Press

• Ingenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil, that tact for the concrete situation, though they are the alpha and omega of the teacher's art, are things to which psychology cannot help us in the least.

  William James

  Teacher, Art, Teaching

  William James (1983). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.16, Harvard University Press

• In teaching, you must simply work your pupil into such a state of interest in what you are going to teach him that every other object of attention is banished from his mind; then reveal it to him so impressively that he will remember the occasion to his dying day; and finally fill him with devouring curiosity to know what the next steps in connection with the subject are.

  William James

  Art, Teaching, Psychology

  William James (1912). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”

• Psychology saves us from mistakes. It makes us more clear as to what we are about. We gain confidence in respect to any method which we are using as soon as we believe that it has theory as well as practice at its back.

  William James

  Art, Mistake, Teaching

  William James (2013). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.4, Courier Corporation

• Psychology ought certainly to give the teacher radical help.

  William James

  Teacher, Art, Teaching

  William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.12, Nuvision Pubns

• The amount of psychology which is necessary to all teachers need not be very great.

  William James

  Teacher, Art, Teaching

  William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.17, Nuvision Pubns

• It is only the fundamental conceptions of psychology which are of real value to a teacher.

  William James

  Teacher, Art, Real

  William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.14, Nuvision Pubns

• What a teacher needs to know about psychology "might almost be written on the palm of one's hand."

  William James

  Teacher, Art, Teaching

• Psychology is a science, and teaching is an art; and sciences never generate arts directly out of themselves.

  William James

  Art, Teaching, Psychology

  William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.14, Nuvision Pubns

• The worst thing that can happen to a good teacher is to get a bad conscience about her profession because she feels herself hopeless as a psychologist.

  William James

  Teacher, Art, Teaching

  William James (1983). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.18, Harvard University Press

• You make a great, very great mistake, if you think that psychology, being the science of the mind's laws, is something from which you can deduce definite programmes and schemes and methods of instruction for immediate schoolroom use.

  William James

  Art, Mistake, Teaching

  William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.14, Nuvision Pubns

• The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics never made a man behave rightly. The most such sciences can do is to help us to catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to behave wrongly; and to criticise ourselves more articulately after we have made mistakes.

  William James

  Art, Mistake, Teaching

  William James (1983). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.15, Harvard University Press

• But it is the bane of psychology to suppose that where results are similar, processes must be the same. Psychologists are too apt to reason as geometers would, if the latter were to say that the diameter of a circle is the same thing as its semi-circumference, because, forsooth, they terminate in the same two points.

  William James

  Circles, Two, Psychology

  William James (2012). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.528, 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

• 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.

  William James

  Philosophy, Order, Medicine

• The first lecture in psychology that I ever heard was the first I ever gave.

  William James

  Psychology, Firsts, Lectures

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