William James Quotes About Science

Quotes about: Science

• The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.

  William James

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

• A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

  William James

  Motivational, Inspiring, Attitude

  "American Treasury, 1455 - 1955". Book by Clifton Fadimany, 1455 - 1955, 1955.

• The function of ignoring, of inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the function of attention itself.

  William James

  Science, Mind, Progress

  William James (2012). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.298, Courier Corporation

• First... a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.

  William James

  Science, Discovery, Important

  Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking Lecture 6 (1907)

• We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

  William James

  Life, Trust, Truth

  William James (1970). “Essays in Pragmatism”, p.170, Simon and Schuster

• Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

  William James

  Creativity, Mean, Science

  William James (2012). “Psychology: The Briefer Course”, p.195, Courier Corporation

• There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough.

  William James

  Science, Belief, Enough

• The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.

  William James

  God, Science, Law

  The Varieties of Religious Experience Lecture 20 (1902)

• We hear in these days of scientific enlightenment a great deal of discussion about the efficacy of Prayer. Many reasons are given why we should not pray. Others give reasons why we should pray. Very little is said of the reason we do pray. The reason is simple: We pray because we cannot help praying.

  William James

  Prayer, Science, Simple

• I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are IMPOSSIBLE.

  William James

  Believe, Science, Deception

  William James (1986). “Essays in Psychical Research”, p.22, Harvard University Press

• ...By far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear witness for them.

  William James

  Science, Abuse, Usual

  William James (2015). “Pragmatism: Human Understanding”, p.22, 谷月社

• 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).

• Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein.

  William James

  Children, Science, Uprising

  The Principles of Psychology vol. 1, ch. 4 (1890)

• Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase of equilibrium in such a structure is marked by what we may call a new set of habits.

  William James

  Strong, Mean, Science

  William James (2012). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.105, Courier Corporation

• Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived from twitching of frogs' legs (especially if the frogs are decapitated) and that, on the other hand, any doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of human beings (with heads on their shoulders) must be benighted and superstitious.

  William James

  Science, Thinking, Hands

  1907 Pragmatism.

• Science can tell us what exists; but to compare the worths, both of what exists and of what does not exist, we must consult not science, but what Pascal calls our heart.

  William James

  Heart, Science, Doe

  William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.18, 谷月社

• Round about the accredited and orderly facts of every science there ever floats a sort of dust-cloud of exceptional observations, of occurrences minute and irregular and seldom met with, which it always proves more easy to ignore than to attend to... Anyone will renovate his science who will steadily look after the irregular phenomena, and when science is renewed, its new formulas often have more of the voice of the exceptions in them than of what were supposed to be the rules.

  William James

  Science, Dust, Voice

• Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's Utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torment, what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?

  William James

  Lonely, Independent, Science

  William James (2012). “The Will to Believe and Human Immortality”, p.133, Courier Corporation

• All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.

  William James

  Science, Past, Taught Us

  William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.119, 谷月社

• The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains; and the 'evolution' of brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms came to be so caught and jammed.

  William James

  Science, Self, Brain

  William James (2012). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.146, Courier Corporation

• Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?

  William James

  Dream, Science, Play

  "The Will to Believe" (1896)

• 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.

  William James

  Educational, Philosophy, Science

  William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.57, Nuvision Pubns

• 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

• The first thing the intellect does with an object is to class it along with something else. But any object that is infinitely important to us and awakens our devotion feels to us also as if it must be sui generis and unique. Probably a crab would be filled with a sense of personal outrage if it could hear us class it without ado or apology as a crustacean, and thus dispose of it. 'I am no such thing,' it would say; 'I am MYSELF, MYSELF alone.

  William James

  Science, Apology, Unique

  William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.9, Courier Corporation

• We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyse them.

  William James

  Powerful, Science, Data

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