Modern man . . . has not ceased to be credulous . . . the need to believe haunts him. — William James Copy Share Image
Hogamus, higamous Man is polygamous Higamus, hogamous Woman monogamous. — 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
The man whose acquisitions stick is the man who is always achieving and advancing whilst his neighbors, spending most of their time… — William James Copy Share Image
Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities. Prune his extravagance, sober him, and you… — William James Copy Share Image
If WE claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given… — William James Copy Share Image
Science herself consults her heart when she lays it down that the infinite ascertainment of fact and correction of false belief are… — William James Copy Share Image
One of the greatest discoveries of our time is that a man can alter the state of their life by altering the… — William James Copy Share Image
How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our… — William James Copy Share Image
Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to… — William James Copy Share Image
The work that leads to a doctor's degree is a constant temptation to sacrifice one's growth as a man to one's growth… — William James Copy Share Image
So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He… — William James Copy Share Image
Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something.… — William James Copy Share Image
Out of time we cut 'days' and 'nights', 'summers' and 'winters.' We say what, each part of the sensible continuum is, and… — 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
Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in… — William James Copy Share Image
When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when… — William James Copy Share Image
A great nation is not saved by wars, it is saved by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by… — William James Copy Share Image
When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of… — 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
Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish for a better kind of man, a loss of appetite… — William James Copy Share Image
Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention . . . But it is their genius… — William James Copy Share Image
There can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and… — William James Copy Share Image
How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive… — William James Copy Share Image
Men's activities are occupied into ways -- in grappling with external circumstances and in striving to set things at one in their… — William James Copy Share Image
Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. ... From time immemorial war has been ...… — William James Copy Share Image
Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. Not through mere perversity do men run after it. — William James Copy Share Image
I am tired of the position of the dried-up critic and doubter. The believer is the true full man. (from a biography… — William James Copy Share Image
Man, biologically considered ... is simply the most formidable of all beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically… — William James Copy Share Image
The most natively interesting object to a man is his own personal self and its fortunes. We accordingly see that the moment… — William James Copy Share Image
Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the… — William James Copy Share Image
The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns; all superior minds feel seriously about them, and… — William James Copy Share Image
For I had often said that the best argument I knew for an immortal life was the existence of a man who… — William James Copy Share Image
Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities his preeminence over them simply and solely… — 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
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
One hears of the mechanical equivalent of heat. What we now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent… — William James Copy Share Image
Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make very small use… — William James Copy Share Image
I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny, invisible molecular… — William James Copy Share Image
A genius is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of attending to anything insipid or distasteful… — 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
