We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyse them. — William James Copy Share Image
I wished by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her become one. — William James Copy Share Image
Psychology is a science, and teaching is an art; and sciences never generate arts directly out of themselves. — William James Copy Share Image
Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together… — William James Copy Share Image
There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough. — William James Copy Share Image
“In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.” — William James Copy Share Image
The function of ignoring, of inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the function of attention itself. — William James Copy Share Image
Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not. — William James Copy Share Image
I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain… — William James Copy Share Image
Science herself consults her heart when she lays it down that the infinite ascertainment of fact and correction of false belief are… — William James Copy Share Image
“the rigorously impersonal view of science might one day appear as having been a temporarily useful eccentricity rather than the definitively triumphant… — William James Copy Share Image
Nature in her unfathomable designs had mixed us of clay and flame, of brain and mind, that the two things hang indubitably… — William James Copy Share Image
The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains; and the… — William James Copy Share Image
...By far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions… — William James Copy Share Image
The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail… — William James Copy Share Image
We hear in these days of scientific enlightenment a great deal of discussion about the efficacy of Prayer. Many reasons are given… — 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
(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
When two minds of a high order, interested in kindred subjects, come together, their conversation is chiefly remarkable for the summariness of… — William James Copy Share Image
Consciousness... does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as… — William James Copy Share Image
Round about the accredited and orderly facts of every science there ever floats a sort of dust-cloud of exceptional observations, of occurrences… — William James Copy Share Image
We [may] answer the question: "Why is snow white?" by saying, "For the same reason that soap-suds or whipped eggs are white"-in… — William James Copy Share Image
Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's Utopias should all be… — William James Copy Share Image
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
A good hypothesis in science must have other properties than those of the phenomenon it is immediately invoked to explain, otherwise it… — William James Copy Share Image
Science must constantly be reminded that her purposes are not the only purposes and that the order of uniform causation which she… — 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
We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and as carefully guard against… — William James Copy Share Image
Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence,… — William James Copy Share Image
Science can tell us what exists; but to compare the worths, both of what exists and of what does not exist, we… — William James Copy Share Image
The greatest discovery of the 19th century was not in the realm of the physical sciences, but the power of the subconscious… — William James Copy Share Image
Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the… — William James Copy Share Image
The first effect of the mind growing cultivated is that processes once multiple get to be performed in a single act. Lazarus… — William James Copy Share Image
“Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly. The fundamental conceptions of psychology are practically very clear to us,… — 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
![“We [may] answer the question: "Why is snow white?" by saying, "For the same reason that soap-suds or whipped eggs are white"-in other words, instead of giving the reason for a fact, we give another example of the same fact. This offering a similar instance, instead of a reason, has often been…” quote by William James](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/ca9/william-james-228_abstract_we-may-answer-the-question-why-is-snow-w_906888.jpg)
