William James Quotes - Page 22

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To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value, is quite illogical and arbitrary, unless one have already worked out in advance some psycho-physical theory connecting spiritual values in general with determinate sorts of physiological change. Otherwise none of our thoughts and feelings, not even our scientific doctrines, not even our dis -beliefs, could retain any value as revelations of the truth, for every one of them without exception flows from the state of their possessor's body at the time.

William James

Spiritual, Religious, Feelings

William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.14, Courier Corporation

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Our intelligence cannot wall itself up alive, like a pupa in a chrysalis. It must at any cost keep on speaking terms with the universe that engendered it.

William James

Wall, Cost, Alive

William James (1977). “A Pluralistic Universe”, p.94, Harvard University Press

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Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them; and no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical propositions apply.

William James

Swings, Law, Mind

William James (2016). “William James: Essays and Lectures”, p.237, Routledge

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Philosophy, beginning in wonder, as Plato and Aristotle said, is able to fancy everything different from what it is. It sees the familiar as if it were strange, and the strange as if it were familiar. It can take things up and lay them down again. It rouses us from our native dogmatic slumber and breaks up our caked prejudices.

William James

Plato, Philosophy, Slumber

William James (2016). “William James: Essays and Lectures”, p.60, Routledge

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When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome.

William James

Responsibility, Order, Decision

William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.167, Nuvision Pubns

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To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off at the outset b abstract accusations of self-contradiction

William James

Truth, Self, Giving

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All the daily routine of life, our dressing and undressing, the coming and going from our work or carrying through of its various operations, is utterly without mental reference to pleasure and pain, except under rarely realized conditions.

William James

Happiness, Pain, Routine

William James (1918). “The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 2”, p.553, Courier Corporation

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A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms; but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description.

William James

Horse, Cat, Science

William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.51, 谷月社

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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

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It is very important that teachers should realize the importance of habit.

William James

Teacher, Important, Realizing

William James (2014). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology; And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.48, BookRix

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Our theories are wedged and controlled as nothing else is. Yet sometimes alternative theoretic formulas are equally compatible with all the truths we know, and then we choose between them for subjective reasons. We choose the kind of theory to which we are already partial: we follow 'elegenace' or 'economy'

William James

Truth, Alternatives, Kind

William James (2015). “Pragmatism and the Conception of Thruth”, p.173, William James

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The trail of the human serpent is thus over everything.

William James

Trails, Serpent, Humans

William James (2015). “Pragmatism: Human Understanding”, p.23, 谷月社

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On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.

William James

God, Principles, Theism

William James (2012). “Pragmatism”, p.115, Courier Corporation

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Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism.

William James

Reality, Theatre, Heroism

William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature”, p.123, Xist Publishing

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Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this world's life

William James

Educational, Philosophy, Men

William James (2014). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology; And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.22, BookRix

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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)

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To spend life for something which outlasts it.

William James

Achievement

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All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows that the service of the collectivity that owns him needs them. If proud of the collectivity, his own pride rises in proportion. No collectivity is like an army for nourishing such pride.

William James

Army, Pride, Men

William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.1289, Library of America

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[Pragmatism's] only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity of experience's demands, nothing being omitted.

William James

Truth, Demand, Tests

William James (1981). “Pragmatism”, p.38, Hackett Publishing

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So it is with children who learn to read fluently and well: They begin to take flight into whole new worlds as effortlessly as young birds take to the sky.

William James

Children, Reading, Sky

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In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day. Apprehension is vivid, retentiveness strong, and our recollections of that time, like those in a time spent in rapid and interesting travel, are of something intricate, multitudinous, and long-drawn-out. But as each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to a contentless unit, and the years grow hollow and collapse.

William James

Strong, New Experiences, Years

William James (2007). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.625, Cosimo, Inc.

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That reality is 'independent' means that there is something in every experience that escapes our arbitrary control. If it be a sensible experience it coerces our attention; if a sequence, we cannot invert it; if we compare two terms we can come to only one result. There is a push, an urgency, within our very experience, against which we are on the whole powerless, and which drives us in a direction that is the destiny of our belief.

William James

Independent, Mean, Reality

William James (2015). “The Meaning of Truth: Human Understanding”, p.27, 谷月社

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Experience, as we know, has a way of boiling over, and making us correct our present formulas.

William James

Experience, Boiling Over, Way

William James (2008). “Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking”, p.98, Cosimo, Inc.

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Tell him to live by yes and no - yes to everything good, no to everything bad.

William James

Yes And No, Live By

"The Thought and Character of William James". Book by Ralph Barton Perry, 1935.

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Old-fashioned determinism was what we may call hard determinism. It did not shrink from such words as fatality, bondage of the will, necessitation, and the like. Nowadays, we have a soft determinism which abhors harsh words, and, repudiating fatality, necessity, and even predetermination, says that its real name is freedom; for freedom is only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.

William James

Freedom, Real, Names

William James, Robert D Richardson (2010). “The Heart of William James”, p.23, Harvard University Press

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

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