The bottom of being is left logically opaque to us, a datum in the strict sense of the word, something we simply… — William James Copy Share Image
We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if she were full… — 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
If theological ideas prove to have a value for concrete life, they will be true, for pragmatism, in the sense of being… — William James Copy Share Image
You make a great, very great mistake, if you think that psychology, being the science of the mind's laws, is something from… — William James Copy Share Image
All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows that the service of the collectivity that owns him needs them.… — William James Copy Share Image
“Philosophy, beginning in wonder, as Plato and Aristotle said, is able to fancy everything different from what it is. It sees the… — William James Copy Share Image
The art of remembering is the art of thinking. When we wish to fix a new thing in either our own mind… — 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
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
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
Who does not see that we are likely to ascertain the distinctive significance of religious melancholy and happiness, or of religious trances,… — William James Copy Share Image
Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a… — William James Copy Share Image
“However inadequate our ideas of causal efficacy may be, we are less wide of the mark when we say that our ideas… — William James Copy Share Image
We believe as much as we can. We would believe everything if we could. — William James Copy Share Image
If you want a confidence, act as if you already have it. Try the "as if" technique. — William James Copy Share Image
Men are now proud of belonging to a conquering nation, and without a murmur they lay down their persons and their wealth,… — William James Copy Share Image
If you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly attain it. Only you must, then, really wish these things,… — 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
Fatalism, whose solving word in all crises of behavior is All striving is vain, will never reign supreme, for the impulse to… — William James Copy Share Image
The total mental efficiency of a man is the resultant of the working together of all his faculties. He is too complex… — William James Copy Share Image
Even if matter could do every outward thing that God does, the idea of it would not work as satisfactorily, because the… — William James Copy Share Image
... if we take the universe of 'fitting,' countless coats 'fit' backs, and countless boots 'fit' feet, on which they are not… — William James Copy Share Image
If I should throw down a thousand beans at random upon a table, I could doubtless, by eliminating a sufficient number of… — 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
