William James Quotes - Page 27

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Failure, then, failure! so the world stamps us at every turn. We strew it with our blunders, our misdeeds, our lost opportunities, with all the memorials of our inadequacy to our vocation. And with what a damning emphasis does it then blot us out! No easy fine, no mere apology or formal expiation, will satisfy the world's demands, but every pound of flesh exacted is soaked with all its blood. The subtlest forms of suffering known to man are connected with the poisonous humiliations incidental to these results.

William James

Apology, Opportunity, Men

William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.134, Booklassic

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The nation blest above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans and empty quacks.

William James

War, Party, Writing

"Essays in Religion and Morality".

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

William James

Teacher, Art, Teaching

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A little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians.

William James

Pain, Spring, Loss

William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.140, Courier Corporation

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Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them; which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts' themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.

William James

Truth, Add, Facts

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

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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

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... I am the same personal being who in old times upon the Earth had those experiences.

William James

Earth, Reincarnation, Old Time

William James, Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, Ignas K. Skrupskelis (1982). “Essays in Religion and Morality”, p.76, Harvard University Press

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Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true.

William James

Believe, Belief, Action

William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.22, 谷月社

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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

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The teachers of this country, one may say, have its future in their hands.

William James

Country, Teacher, Teaching

William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.11, Nuvision Pubns

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When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries.

William James

Bipolar, Genius, Kind

William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.29, Library of America

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I don't see how an epigram, being a bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ.

William James

Blue, Introduction, Epigrams

William James (2008). “The Letters of William James”, Cosimo, Inc.

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Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains; under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core.

William James

Life, Real, Culture

'McClure's Magazine' February 1908, p. 422

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It is not probable that the reader will be satisfied with any of these solutions, and contemporary philosophers, even rationalistically minded ones, have on the whole agreed that no one has intelligibly banished the mystery of fact.

William James

Philosophy, Facts, Philosopher

"Some Problems of Philosophy".

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Voices of the glorified urge us onward. They who have passed from the semblances of time to the realities of eternity call upon us to advance. The rest that awaits us invites us forward. We do not pine for our rest before God wills it. We long for no inglorious rest. We are thankful rather for the invaluable training of difficulty, the loving discipline of danger and strife. Yet in the midst of it all the prospect of rest invites us heavenward. Through all, and above all, God cries, "Go forward!" "Come up higher!

William James

Reality, Voice, Discipline

"Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 564, 1895.

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The most violent revolutions in an individuals beliefs leave most of his old order standing. Time and space, cause and effect, nature and history, and ones own biography remain untouched. New truth is always a go-between, a smoother-over of transitions. It marries old opinion to new fact so as ever to show a minimum of jolt, a maximum of continuity.

William James

Order, Space, Biographies

William James (2015). “Pragmatism and the Conception of Thruth”, p.50, William James

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The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.

William James

Men, Essence, Giving

William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature”, p.13, Xist Publishing

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The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.

William James

Opinion, Consciousness, Mystic

William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.387, Courier Corporation

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As long as there are postmen, life will have zest.

William James

Zest, Long, Expectations

"The Brooklyn man who wrote to Gadhafi" by Moni Basu, www.cnn.com. November 14, 2011.

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Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists.

William James

Interesting, May, Becoming

William James (2014). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology; And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.69, BookRix

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Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible ... faith is the readiness to act in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified to us in advance.

William James

Mean, Issues, Doubt

William James (1956). “The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, and Human Immortality”, p.90, Courier Corporation

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The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stoodthere from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.

William James

Block, Thoughtful, Thinking

William James (2012). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.288, Courier Corporation

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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

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When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in.

William James

Reality, Men, Evil

Dr. William James (2013). “The William James Reader”, p.369, Simon and Schuster

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Results should not be too voluntarily aimed at or too busily thought of. They are sure to float up of their own accord from a long enough daily work at a given matter.

William James

Long, Matter, Enough

William James (2008). “The Letters of William James”, p.133, Cosimo, Inc.

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

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