The philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or less dumb… — William James Copy Share Image
Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain. — William James Copy Share Image
The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly. — William James Copy Share Image
That reality is 'independent' means that there is something in every experience that escapes our arbitrary control. If it be a sensible… — William James Copy Share Image
Organization and method mean much, but contagious human characters mean more in a university. — William James Copy Share Image
The most ancient parts of truth . . . also once were plastic. They also were called true for human reasons. They… — William James Copy Share Image
So you see that the process of education, taken in a large way, may be described as nothing but the process of… — William James Copy Share Image
Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual… — William James Copy Share Image
What do believers in the Absolute mean by saving that their belief affords them comfort? They mean that since in the Absolute… — William James Copy Share Image
Religion . . . shall mean for us the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude. — William James Copy Share Image
Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence,… — William James Copy Share Image
Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought. — William James Copy Share Image
From a pragmatic point of view, the difference between living against a background of foreigness (an indifferent Universe) and one of intimacy… — William James Copy Share Image
The stream of thought flows on; but most of its segments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory… — William James Copy Share Image
Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means… — William James Copy Share Image
The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly. What can be more base and unworthy than the… — William James Copy Share Image
Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes; spiritualism means theaffirmation of… — William James Copy Share Image
We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may… — William James Copy Share Image
Faith is one of the forces by which men live, and the total absence of it means collapse — William James Copy Share Image
The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires. — William James Copy Share Image
Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible ... faith is the readiness to act in a cause… — 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
