If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong… — 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
Considering the inner fitness of things, one would rather think that the very first act of a will endowed with freedom should… — William James Copy Share Image
To be fertile in hypotheses is the first perquisite of creativity and to be willing to throw them away the moment experience… — William James Copy Share Image
The first thing that intellect does with an object is to class it with something else. — William James Copy Share Image
The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own particular ways of being happy, provided those ways… — 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
If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong… — 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
A man may not achieve everything he has dreamed, but he will never achieve anything great without having dreamed it first. — William James Copy Share Image
Religions have approved themselves; they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly,… — William James Copy Share Image
The exercise of voluntary attention in the schoolroom must therefore be counted one of the most important points of training that take… — William James Copy Share Image
To begin with, our knowledge grows in spots. The spots may be large or small, but the knowledge ever grows all over...… — William James Copy Share Image
A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows. — 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
I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality.… — William James Copy Share Image
To begin with our knowledge grows in spots. ..What you first gain, ... is probably a small amount of new information, a… — William James Copy Share Image
The difference between the first and second-best things in art absolutely seems to escape verbal definition -- it is a matter of… — William James Copy Share Image
First... a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is… — William James Copy Share Image
The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that… — William James Copy Share Image
The first lecture in psychology that I ever heard was the first I ever gave. — William James Copy Share Image
If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one… — William James Copy Share Image
An educated memory depends on an organized system of associations; and its goodness depends on two of their peculiarities: first, on the… — William James Copy Share Image
The first thing the intellect does with an object is to class it along with something else. But any object that is… — 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
![“We [may] answer the question: "Why is snow white?" by…” quote by William James](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/ca9/william-james-228_abstract_we-may-answer-the-question-why-is-snow-w_906888.jpg)
