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Philosophy Quotes by William James

88 Philosophy quotes by William James

All Philosophy quotes William James’s page

William James says philosophy can be both the most sublime and the most trivial, working in tiny crannies and opening wide vistas. He notes that an idea can catch another mind like an emotion, spreading through association. He also describes philosophy as our personal, sometimes messy, sense of what life truly means.

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Habit is second nature, or rather . . . ten times nature.

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Most men have a good memory for facts connected with their own pursuits.

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“Wisdom is seeing something in a non-habitual manner.”

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All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.

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The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

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To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.

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To some of us the thought of God is like a sort of quiet music playing in the background of the mind.

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In all primary school work the principle of multiple impressions is well recognized.

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It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association

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Considering the inner fitness of things, one would rather think that the very first act of a will endowed with freedom should…

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“There is something almost shocking in the notion of so chaste a function carrying this Kantian hurlyburly in her womb.”

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I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important…

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... A rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those ... truths were really…

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In all this process of acquiring conceptions, a certain instinctive order is followed. There is a native tendency to assimilate certain kinds…

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Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she…

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The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by…

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The entire routine of our memorized acquisitions, for example, is a consequence of nothing but the Law of Contiguity. The words of…

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But when all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence and can make their…

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There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account…

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Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it…

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“The history of philosophy is, to a great extent, that of a certain clash of human temperaments…Of whatever temperament a philosopher is,…

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It is not probable that the reader will be satisfied with any of these solutions, and contemporary philosophers, even rationalistically minded ones,…

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All that we need explicitly to note is that, the more the passive attention is relied on, by keeping the material interesting;…

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The art of remembering is the art of thinking. When we wish to fix a new thing in either our own mind…

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The gist of the matter is this: Every impression that comes in from without, be it a sentence which we hear, an…

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Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual…

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“Common-Law judges sometimes talk about the law, and schoolmasters talk about the latin tongue, in a way to make their hearers think…

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If, then, you wish to insure the interest of your pupils, there is only one way to do it; and that is…

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If the topic be highly abstract, show its nature by concrete examples; if it be unfamiliar, make it figure as part of…

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“There is, it must be confessed, a curious fascination in hearing deep things talked about, even tho neither we nor the disputants…

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“It is as if a man should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly…

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“The most violent revolutions in an individual's beliefs leave most of his old order standing. Time and space, cause and effect, nature…

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“Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we…

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“This sadness lies at the heart of every merely positivistic, agnostic, or naturalistic scheme of philosophy. Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best…

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“See the exquisite contrast of the types of mind! The pragmatist clings to facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in…

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To know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teacher.

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Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

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Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions.

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A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates.

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Philosophy is "an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly.

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More by William James

Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world.

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…

In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who…

“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…

Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.

'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.

Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience; they will lead him nowhere or…

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

It is your friends who make your world.

Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them,…

“How soon, indeed, are human things forgotten! As we meet here this morning, the Southern sun is shining on their place of burial, and…

There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere.

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes…