Out of time we cut 'days' and 'nights', 'summers' and 'winters.' We say what, each part of the sensible continuum is, and… — 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
The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying… — William James Copy Share Image
To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off… — William James Copy Share Image
From all these facts there emerges a very simple abstract program for the teacher to follow in keeping the attention of the… — 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
Life is one long struggle between conclusions based on abstract ways of conceiving cases, and opposite conclusions prompted by our instinctive perception… — William James Copy Share Image
Compared with men, it is probable that brutes neither attend to abstract characters, nor have associations by similarity. Their thoughts probably pass… — William James Copy Share Image
Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract — William James Copy Share Image
Modern transcendental idealism, Emersonianism, for instance, also seems to let God evaporate into abstract Ideality. Not a deity in concreto, not a… — William James Copy Share Image
Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be they principles, under penalty of… — William James Copy Share Image
Don't preach too much to your pupils or abound in good talk in the abstract. Lie in wait rather for the practical… — William James Copy Share Image
Far from being antecedent principles that animate the process, law, language, truth are but abstract names for its results. — William James Copy Share Image
You perceive now, my friends, what your general or abstract duty is as teachers. Although you have to generate in your pupils… — 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
Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world. — William James Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. — William James Copy Share Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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