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Psychology Quotes by William James

92 Psychology quotes by William James

All Psychology quotes William James’s page

The dim background of our mind knows what we ought to do, as these thoughts explain. The quotes say that changing our attitude can change our life, that what we feed our mind shapes us, and that perception comes partly from senses and partly from our own thoughts. They also note the impact of inspiring teachers.

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Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

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You can alter your life by altering the state of your mind.

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I wished by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her become one.

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If you can change your mind, you can change your life.

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The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds.

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Psychology ought certainly to give the teacher radical help.

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The first lecture in psychology that I ever heard was the first I ever gave.

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“What was bright and exciting becomes weary, flat, and unprofitable.”

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An idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort of a…

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How many of us persist in a precipitate course which, but for a moment of heedlessness we might never have entered upon,…

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Mental fire is what won't burn real sticks; mental water is what won't necessarily (though of course it may) put out even…

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One of the greatest discoveries of our time is that a man can alter the state of their life by altering the…

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In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.

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Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to…

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To some of us the thought of God is like a sort of quiet music playing in the background of the mind.

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Psychology is a science, and teaching is an art; and sciences never generate arts directly out of themselves.

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Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them; and…

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The states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the Soul to…

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Nature in her unfathomable designs had mixed us of clay and flame, of brain and mind, that the two things hang indubitably…

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Ideas are so much flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives them cognitive lustre. This is why as a pragmatistI have…

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Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she…

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“There is a finely translated epigram in the greek anthology which admirably expresses this state of mind, this acceptance of loss as…

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Millions of items in the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they…

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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…

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If, then, you wish to insure the interest of your pupils, there is only one way to do it; and that is…

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When two minds of a high order, interested in kindred subjects, come together, their conversation is chiefly remarkable for the summariness of…

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The art of remembering is the art of thinking. When we wish to fix a new thing in either our own mind…

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In teaching, you must simply work your pupil into such a state of interest in what you are going to teach him…

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The total mental efficiency of a man is the resultant of the working together of all his faculties. He is too complex…

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A genius is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of attending to anything insipid or distasteful…

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To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value,…

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The greatest discovery of the 19th century was not in the realm of the physical sciences, but the power of the subconscious…

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“Most of us probably fall several times a day into a fit somewhat like this: The eyes are fixed on vacancy, the…

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“See the exquisite contrast of the types of mind! The pragmatist clings to facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in…

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“Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we…

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“But psychology is passing into a less simple phase. Within a few years what one may call a microscopic psychology has arisen…

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The mind is made up by what it feeds upon.

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The amount of psychology which is necessary to all teachers need not be very great.

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The power to move the world is in the subconcious mind

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“Psychology is the science of mental life”

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More by William James

Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world.

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…

In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who…

“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…

Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.

'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.

Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience; they will lead him nowhere or…

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

It is your friends who make your world.

Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them,…

“How soon, indeed, are human things forgotten! As we meet here this morning, the Southern sun is shining on their place of burial, and…

There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere.

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes…