To know an object is to lead to it through a context which the world provides — William James Copy Share Image
Spiritual energy flows in and produces effects in the phenomenal world. — 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
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 world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck. — William James Copy Share Image
So it is with children who learn to read fluently and well: They begin to take flight into whole new worlds as… — William James Copy Share Image
The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of… — William James Copy Share Image
Spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, within the phenomenal world. — William James Copy Share Image
Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism. — William James Copy Share Image
Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world. — 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
Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them; and… — William James Copy Share Image
In the last analysis, then, we believe that we all know and think about and talk about the same world because we… — William James Copy Share Image
Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite… — William James Copy Share Image
I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important… — William James Copy Share Image
The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the… — William James Copy Share Image
We divert our attention from disease and death as much as we can; the slaughterhouses are huddled out of sight and never… — William James Copy Share Image
The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this… — William James Copy Share Image
In this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a view of things is 'noble,' that ought… — William James Copy Share Image
The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of… — William James Copy Share Image
In my individual heart I fully believe my faith is as robust as yours. The trouble with your robust and full bodied… — 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
What do believers in the Absolute mean by saving that their belief affords them comfort? They mean that since in the Absolute… — 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
We must frankly confess, then, using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actually is, the… — 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
It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster,… — William James Copy Share Image
So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do. — 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
The old question of whether there is design is idle. The real question is what is the world, whether or not it… — William James Copy Share Image
Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the… — William James Copy Share Image
Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism. In heroism, we feel, life's… — William James Copy Share Image
“[There are, in us] possibilities that take our breath away, and show a world wider than either physics or philistine ethics can… — William James Copy Share Image
I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny, invisible molecular… — William James Copy Share Image
Failure, then, failure! so the world stamps us at every turn. We strew it with our blunders, our misdeeds, our lost opportunities,… — 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
![“[There are, in us] possibilities that take our breath away, and show a world wider than either physics or philistine ethics can imagine. Here is a world in which all is well, in spite of certain forms of death, death of hope, death of strength, death of responsibility, of fear and wrong, death of…” quote by William James](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/db5/william-james-228_breaths_there-are-in-us-possibilities-that-take_2888048.png)
