The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and… — William James Copy Share Image
But when all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence and can make their… — William James Copy Share Image
The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it." "This life is worth living, we can… — 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
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
As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different… — William James Copy Share Image
If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take us… — William James Copy Share Image
Contemporary philosophers, even the rationalistic minded ones, have on the whole agreed that no one has intelligibly banished the mystery of fact. — William James Copy Share Image
The entire routine of our memorized acquisitions, for example, is a consequence of nothing but the Law of Contiguity. The words of… — William James Copy Share Image
Divinity lies all around us, but society remains too hidebound to accept that fact...The mother sea and the fountain-head of all religions… — William James Copy Share Image
Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process:… — William James Copy Share Image
But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them theyare sure to combine. — William James Copy Share Image
Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in… — 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
Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them; which facts again create or reveal new… — William James Copy Share Image
A remarkable parallel, which I think has never been noticed, obtains between the facts of social evolution on the one hand, and… — William James Copy Share Image
I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable… — 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
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
We ought, all of us, to realize each other in this intense, pathetic, and important way. If you say that this is… — William James Copy Share Image
The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed… — William James Copy Share Image
The subjectivist in morals, when his moral feelings are at war with the facts about him, is always free to seek harmony… — William James Copy Share Image
Owing to the fact that all experience is a process, no point of view can ever be the last one — 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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