The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics never made a man behave rightly. The… — William James Copy Share Image
There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind of what you would like to be,… — William James Copy Share Image
“An outree explanation, violating all our preconceptions, would never pass for a true account of a novelty. We should scratch round industriously… — 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
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
Intellectualism' is the belief that our mind comes upon a world complete in itself, and has the duty of ascertaining its contents;… — William James Copy Share Image
You make a great, very great mistake, if you think that psychology, being the science of the mind's laws, is something from… — William James Copy Share Image
Ingenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil, that tact for the concrete situation, though they are the alpha and omega of the… — William James Copy Share Image
“What right have we to believe Nature under any obligation to do her work by means of complete minds only? She may… — William James Copy Share Image
Psychology saves us from mistakes. It makes us more clear as to what we are about. We gain confidence in respect to… — William James Copy Share Image
“To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense… — 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
