“Whatever is beyond this narrow rational consciousness we mistake for our only consciousness.” — William James Copy Share Image
“What was bright and exciting becomes weary, flat, and unprofitable.” — William James Copy Share Image
The total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but mutually ignore each other. — William James Copy Share Image
Man lives in only one small room of the enormous house of his consciousness. — William James Copy Share Image
To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that… — William James Copy Share Image
Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted… — William James Copy Share Image
The states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the Soul to… — William James Copy Share Image
As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different… — William James Copy Share Image
The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of… — William James Copy Share Image
The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that… — William James Copy Share Image
The study a posteriori of the distribution of consciousness shows it to be exactly such as we might expect in an organ… — William James Copy Share Image
As the brain changes are continuous, so do all these consciousnesses melt into each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but… — William James Copy Share Image
Volition . . . takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and depends on our having… — William James Copy Share Image
The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of… — William James Copy Share Image
Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in… — William James Copy Share Image
Consciousness... does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as… — William James Copy Share Image
The gist of the matter is this: Every impression that comes in from without, be it a sentence which we hear, an… — William James Copy Share Image
Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is… — William James Copy Share Image
Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make very small use… — William James Copy Share Image
It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of… — William James Copy Share Image
“Everyone knows what attention is. It is taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what… — William James Copy Share Image
The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our… — William James Copy Share Image
There is but one indefectibly certain truth , and that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves standing, the truth that… — William James Copy Share Image
Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world. — William James Copy Share
We are all potentially such sick men. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison-inmates. And whenever we… — William James Copy Share
In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who… — William James Copy Share
“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… — William James Copy Share
Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience; they will lead him nowhere or… — William James Copy Share
We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be. — William James Copy Share
Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them,… — William James Copy Share
“How soon, indeed, are human things forgotten! As we meet here this morning, the Southern sun is shining on their place of burial, and… — William James Copy Share
There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere. — William James Copy Share
It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. — William James Copy Share
The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes… — William James Copy Share
