All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods. — William James Copy Share Image
In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only… — 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
We ought, all of us, to realize each other in this intense, pathetic, and important way. If you say that this is… — William James Copy Share Image
I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable… — William James Copy Share Image
“We must judge the tree by its fruit. The best fruits of the religious experience are the best things history has to… — William James Copy Share Image
It is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies, wealth is better than… — 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
All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than… — William James Copy Share Image
The further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible 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
