William James Quotes - Page 25

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All natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it.

William James

Happiness, Contradiction, Natural

William James, Robert D Richardson (2010). “The Heart of William James”, p.219, Harvard University Press

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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

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But petitional prayer is only one department of prayer; and if we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every kind of inward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine, we can easily see that scientific criticism leaves it untouched. Prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion.

William James

Prayer, Essence, Soul

William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature”, p.151, Xist Publishing

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In the last analysis, then, we believe that we all know and think about and talk about the same world because we believe our PERCEPTS are possessed by us in common

William James

Truth, Believe, Thinking

William James (2013). “The Meaning of Truth”, p.26, Courier Corporation

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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

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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

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How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well?

William James

Time, Men, Romance

William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature”, p.60, Xist Publishing

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...These healers...my intellect has been unable to assimilate their theories....But their facts are patent and startling; and anything that interferes with the multiplication of such facts, and with our freest opportunity of observing and studying them, will, I believe, be a public calamity.

William James

Believe, Dark, Opportunity

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I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds.

William James

Philosophy, Interesting, Perspective

William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.487, Library of America

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In this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a view of things is 'noble,' that ought to count as presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic disqualification. The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman.

William James

Real, Views, Sweat

William James (2015). “Pragmatism: Human Understanding”, p.26, 谷月社

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Between what a man calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw. We feel and act about certain things that are ours very much as we feel and act about ourselves.

William James

Men, Lines, Certain

William James (2012). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.291, Courier Corporation

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For morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers.

William James

War, Volunteer, Political

William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.45, Courier Corporation

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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

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Humanism . . . is not a single hypothesis or theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. It is rather a slow shifting in the philosophic perspective, making things appear as from a new centre of interest or point of sight.

William James

Sight, Perspective, Shifting

Dr. William James (2013). “The William James Reader”, p.102, Simon and Schuster

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The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all the more felt because it was not seen. I could not any more have doubted that HE was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two.

William James

Real, Night, Two

William James (1985). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.61, Harvard University Press

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What do believers in the Absolute mean by saving that their belief affords them comfort? They mean that since in the Absolute finite evil is ‘overruled’ already, we may, therefore, whenever we wish, treat the temporal as if it were potentially the eternal, be sure that we can trust its outcome, and, without sin, dismiss our fear and drop the worry of our finite responsibility. In short, they mean that we have a right ever and anon to take a moral holiday, to let the world wag in its own way, feeling that its issues are in better hands than ours and are none of our business.

William James

Holiday, Mean, Responsibility

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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

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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

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For I had often said that the best argument I knew for an immortal life was the existence of a man who deserved one as well as Child did.

William James

Men, Immortal Life, Life Is

"Essays in Psychical Research".

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Considering the inner fitness of things, one would rather think that the very first act of a will endowed with freedom should be to sustain the belief in the freedom itself.

William James

Philosophy, Educational, Thinking

William James, Robert D Richardson (2010). “The Heart of William James”, p.127, Harvard University Press

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Who does not see that we are likely to ascertain the distinctive significance of religious melancholy and happiness, or of religious trances, far better by comparing them as conscientiously as we can with other varieties of melancholy, happiness, and trance, than by refusing to consider their place in any more general series, and treating them as if they were outside of nature's order altogether?

William James

Religious, Order, Doe

William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.24, Courier Corporation

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The most ancient parts of truth . . . also once were plastic. They also were called true for human reasons. They also mediated between still earlier truths and what in those days were novel observations. Purely objective truth, truth in whose establishment the function of giving human satisfaction in marrying previous parts of experience with newer parts played no role whatsoever, is nowhere to be found. The reasons why we call things true is the reason why they are true, for to be true means only to perform this marriage-function.

William James

Truth, Mean, Giving

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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

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Lets take full advantage of this discovery

William James

Encouragement, Discovery, Advantage

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Impulse without reason is enough, and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift.

William James

Reason, Enough, Poor

"The Letters of William James".

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

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