William James Quotes - Page 14

Quotes about:

Acceptance Achievement Adversity Affection Age Alcohol Animals

Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality.

William James

Truth, Mean, Reality

William James (2016). “William James: Essays and Lectures”, p.99, Routledge

8 Copy quote
The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.

William James

Lonely, Civilization, Agony

William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.158, Booklassic

5 Copy quote
As Charles Lamb says, there is nothing so nice as doing good by stealth and being found out by accident, so I now say it is even nicer to make heroic decisions and to be prevented by 'circumstances beyond your control' from ever trying to execute them.

William James

Nice, Decision, Trying

10 Copy quote
From the Vedas we learn a practical art of surgery, medicine, music, house building under which mechanized art is included. They are encyclopedia of every aspect of life, culture, religion, science, ethics, law, cosmology and meteorology.

William James

Art, Law, Culture Religion

10 Copy quote
As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate!

William James

Reading, Book, Trying

7 Copy quote
Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.

William James

History, Grease, Mind

William James (2015). “Pragmatism and the Conception of Thruth”, p.134, William James

6 Copy quote
True to her inveterate habit, rationalism reverts to 'principles,' and thinks that when an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular solution.

William James

Thinking, Principles, Habit

William James (2013). “Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (New Thought Edition - Secret Library)”, p.105, Lulu Press, Inc

6 Copy quote
There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.

William James

Needs, Way, Companionship

William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.269, Booklassic

8 Copy quote
'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.

William James

Knowledge, Science, Facts

William James (2012). “The Will to Believe and Human Immortality”, p.271, Courier Corporation

4 Copy quote
An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

William James

Philosophical, Quality, Ethics

William James (2000). “Pragmatism and Other Writings”, p.242, Penguin

8 Copy quote
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

11 Copy quote
All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.

William James

Philosophic, Ideals, Altars

The Dilemma of Determinism" (1884)

7 Copy quote
We [may] answer the question: "Why is snow white?" by saying, "For the same reason that soap-suds or whipped eggs are white"-in other words, instead of giving the reason for a fact, we give another example of the same fact. This offering a similar instance, instead of a reason, has often been criticised as one of the forms of logical depravity in men. But manifestly it is not a perverse act of thought, but only an incomplete one. Furnishing parallel cases is the necessary first step towards abstracting the reason imbedded in them all.

William James

Science, Men, Offering

7 Copy quote
Truth happens to an idea

William James

Truth, Ideas, Happens

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

6 Copy quote
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

13 Copy quote
Our acts of voluntary attending, as brief and fitful as they are, are nevertheless momentous and critical, determining us, as they do, to higher or lower destinies.

William James

Destiny, Higher, Critical

William James (2013). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.92, Courier Corporation

8 Copy quote
Act in earnest and you will become earnest in all you do.

William James

Truth, Honesty, Integrity

8 Copy quote
Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.

William James

Truth, Ideas, Events

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

8 Copy quote
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

11 Copy quote
The word 'cause' is an altar to an unknown god.

William James

Causes, Altars

12 Copy quote
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

12 Copy quote
The good or bad is not in the circumstance, but only in the mind...that encounters it.

William James

Gratitude, Mind, Encounters

7 Copy quote
Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. ... From time immemorial war has been ... the supremely thrilling excitement.

William James

War, Men, Thrill

7 Copy quote
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”

5 Copy quote
The greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes.

William James

Reflection, Pope, Instinct

William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.12, 谷月社

4 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Charles Sanders Peirce

G. Stanley Hall

William James

Follow

Born: January 11, 1842
Died: August 26, 1910
Occupation: Philosopher
Cite this Page: Citation

Popular Topics