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
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
Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she… — 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
The states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the Soul to… — William James Copy Share Image
“There is, it must be confessed, a curious fascination in hearing deep things talked about, even tho neither we nor the disputants… — William James Copy Share Image
The exercise of voluntary attention in the schoolroom must therefore be counted one of the most important points of training that take… — William James Copy Share Image
Old age has the last word: the purely naturalistic look at life, however enthusiastically it may begin, is sure to end in… — 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
Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists. The… — William James Copy Share Image
Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly. — 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
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. — William James Copy Share Image
All that we need explicitly to note is that, the more the passive attention is relied on, by keeping the material interesting;… — 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
The general law is that no mental modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or followed by a bodily change. — William James Copy Share Image
I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important… — William James Copy Share Image
Few people have definitely articulated philosophies of their own. But almost everyone has his own peculiar sense of a certain total character… — William James Copy Share Image
To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking. — William James Copy Share Image
I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality.… — William James Copy Share Image
From the Vedas we learn a practical art of surgery, medicine, music, house building under which mechanized art is included. They are… — William James Copy Share Image
The difference between an interesting and a tedious teacher consists in little more than the inventiveness by which the one is able… — William James Copy Share Image
The gist of the matter is this: Every impression that comes in from without, be it a sentence which we hear, an… — William James Copy Share Image
We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and as carefully guard against… — William James Copy Share Image
“It is as if a man should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly… — 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
