The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation. — William James Copy Share Image
Organization and method mean much, but contagious human characters mean more in a university. — William James Copy Share Image
The truth remains that, after adolescence has begun, "words, words, words," must constitute a large part, and an always larger part as… — William James Copy Share Image
It is so human a book that I don't see how belief in its divine authority can survive the reading of it. — William James Copy Share Image
The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves, have been flown… — William James Copy Share Image
The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change… — William James Copy Share Image
True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead to… — William James Copy Share Image
Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains; under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human… — William James Copy Share Image
We are proud of a human nature that could be so passionately extreme, but we shrink from advising others to follow the… — William James Copy Share Image
“Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically… — 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
Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived… — William James Copy Share Image
If evolution and the survival of the fittest be true at all, the destruction of prey and of human rivals must have… — William James Copy Share Image
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of… — William James Copy Share Image
But when all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence and can make their… — William James Copy Share Image
Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it… — William James Copy Share Image
Everyone knows that on any given day there are energies slumbering in him which the incitement's of that day do not call… — William James Copy Share Image
Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies … and… — William James Copy Share Image
Every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost; it… — William James Copy Share Image
(Five) thinkers since Galileo, each informing his successor of what discoveries his own lifetime had seen achieved, might have passed the torch… — William James Copy Share Image
The most ancient parts of truth . . . also once were plastic. They also were called true for human reasons. They… — William James Copy Share Image
Most of us can learn to live in perfect comfort on higher levels of power. Everyone knows that on any given day… — William James Copy Share Image
Compared with men, it is probable that brutes neither attend to abstract characters, nor have associations by similarity. Their thoughts probably pass… — William James Copy Share Image
Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. — William James Copy Share Image
Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. We are making use of only a small part of… — William James Copy Share Image
Feed the growing human being, feed him with the sort of experience for which from year to year he shows a natural… — 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
As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and… — 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
