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
To begin with our knowledge grows in spots. ..What you first gain, ... is probably a small amount of new information, a… — 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
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
Be patient and sympathetic with the type of mind that cuts a poor figure in examinations. It may, in the long examination… — William James Copy Share Image
The first effect of the mind growing cultivated is that processes once multiple get to be performed in a single act. Lazarus… — William James Copy Share Image
To some of us the thought of God is like a sort of quiet music playing in the background of the mind. — William James Copy Share Image
The exercise of prayer, in those who habitually exert it, must be regarded by us doctors as the most adequate and normal… — William James Copy Share Image
It would probably astound each of them beyond measure to be let into his neighbor's mind and to find how different the… — William James Copy Share Image
The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In… — 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
