On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true. — William James Copy Share Image
What a magnificent land and race is this Britain! Everything about them is of better quality than the corresponding thing in the… — William James Copy Share Image
If, then, you wish to insure the interest of your pupils, there is only one way to do it; and that is… — 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
(Five) thinkers since Galileo, each informing his successor of what discoveries his own lifetime had seen achieved, might have passed the torch… — William James Copy Share Image
If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill. But more important than that, practicing this philosophy has made a different… — William James Copy Share Image
There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough. — William James Copy Share Image
... A rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those ... truths were really… — William James Copy Share Image
We need only in cold blood to act as if the thing in question were real and it will infallibly end by… — 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
The sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and… — William James Copy Share Image
It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of… — William James Copy Share Image
Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived… — 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
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
If an unusual necessity forces us onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain point, when, gradually… — William James Copy Share Image
The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains; and the… — William James Copy Share Image
If evolution and the survival of the fittest be true at all, the destruction of prey and of human rivals must have… — William James Copy Share Image
Of course, this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become permanent drunkards by so may separate… — William James Copy Share Image
Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act… — 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
There are 3 rules to follow if you want to change; (1) Start immediately, (2) Do it flamboyantly, (3) No exceptions. — 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
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
