The thinker philosophizes as the lover loves. Even were the consequences not only useless but harmful, he must obey his impulse. — William James Copy Share Image
Impulse without reason is enough, and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift. — William James Copy Share Image
The love of life, at any and every level of development, is the religious impulse. — William James Copy Share Image
The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community. — William James Copy Share Image
Social evolution is a resultant of the interaction of two wholly distinct factors: the individual ... bearing all the power of initiative… — 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
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
The further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible and… — William James Copy Share Image
Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world. — William James Copy Share
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
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
“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
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
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
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
“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
There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere. — William James Copy Share
It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. — William James Copy Share
The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes… — William James Copy Share
