The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments. — William James Copy Share Image
To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking. — William James Copy Share Image
To some of us the thought of God is like a sort of quiet music playing in the background of the mind. — William James Copy Share Image
All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods. — William James Copy Share Image
Most men have a good memory for facts connected with their own pursuits. — William James Copy Share Image
An idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort of a… — William James Copy Share Image
Contemporary philosophers, even the rationalistic minded ones, have on the whole agreed that no one has intelligibly banished the mystery of fact. — William James Copy Share Image
Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. — William James Copy Share Image
The unrest which keeps the never stopping clock of metaphysics going is the thought that the nonexistence of this world is just… — William James Copy Share Image
If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill. But more important than that, practicing this philosophy has made a different… — William James Copy Share Image
Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to… — William James Copy Share Image
Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she… — William James Copy Share Image
The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by… — 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
“There is a finely translated epigram in the greek anthology which admirably expresses this state of mind, this acceptance of loss as… — William James Copy Share Image
There is a stream, a succession of states, or waves, or fields (or whatever you please to call them), of knowledge, of… — William James Copy Share Image
The philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or less dumb… — William James Copy Share Image
The exercise of voluntary attention in the schoolroom must therefore be counted one of the most important points of training that take… — William James Copy Share Image
If the topic be highly abstract, show its nature by concrete examples. If it be unfamiliar, trace some point of analogy in… — William James Copy Share Image
Few people have definitely articulated philosophies of their own. But almost everyone has his own peculiar sense of a certain total character… — William James Copy Share Image
I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality.… — William James Copy Share Image
“Common-Law judges sometimes talk about the law, and schoolmasters talk about the latin tongue, in a way to make their hearers think… — William James Copy Share Image
If, then, you wish to insure the interest of your pupils, there is only one way to do it; and that is… — William James Copy Share Image
Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual… — 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
“The most violent revolutions in an individual's beliefs leave most of his old order standing. Time and space, cause and effect, nature… — William James Copy Share Image
“There is, it must be confessed, a curious fascination in hearing deep things talked about, even tho neither we nor the disputants… — William James Copy Share Image
“It is as if a man should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly… — William James Copy Share Image
If the topic be highly abstract, show its nature by concrete examples; if it be unfamiliar, make it figure as part of… — William James Copy Share Image
“This sadness lies at the heart of every merely positivistic, agnostic, or naturalistic scheme of philosophy. Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best… — William James Copy Share Image
“See the exquisite contrast of the types of mind! The pragmatist clings to facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in… — William James Copy Share Image
“Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we… — William James Copy Share Image
“the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess sucess is our national disease” — William James Copy Share Image
Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly. — William James Copy Share Image
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. — William James Copy Share Image
Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. — William James Copy Share Image
A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates. — 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
![“Few people have definitely articulated philosophies of their own. But almost everyone has his own peculiar sense of a certain total character in the universe, and of the inadequacy of fully to match it [to] the peculiar systems that he knows.” quote by William James](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/870/william-james-228_certain_few-people-have-definitely-articulated-p_1801368.png)
