The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments. — William James Copy Share Image
All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods. — 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
In all this process of acquiring conceptions, a certain instinctive order is followed. There is a native tendency to assimilate certain kinds… — 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
It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association — 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
Considering the inner fitness of things, one would rather think that the very first act of a will endowed with freedom should… — William James Copy Share Image
“There is something almost shocking in the notion of so chaste a function carrying this Kantian hurlyburly in her womb.” — 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
“The notion of God, on the other hand, however inferior it may be in clearness to those mathematical notions so current in… — 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
“There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it positively refuses to account… — William James Copy Share Image
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and… — William James Copy Share Image
The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics never made a man behave rightly. The… — 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
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
“[There are, in us] possibilities that take our breath away, and show a world wider than either physics or philistine ethics can… — 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
An idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort of a… — William James Copy Share Image
Contemporary philosophers, even the rationalistic minded ones, have on the whole agreed that no one has intelligibly banished the mystery of fact. — William James Copy Share Image
Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. — William James Copy Share Image
The unrest which keeps the never stopping clock of metaphysics going is the thought that the nonexistence of this world is just… — William James Copy Share Image
An educated memory depends on an organized system of associations; and its goodness depends on two of their peculiarities: first, on the… — 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
The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by… — William James Copy Share Image
Humanism . . . is not a single hypothesis or theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. It is rather a… — William James Copy Share Image
“It never occurs to most of us .. that the question 'what is the truth' is no real question (being irrelative to… — 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 art of remembering is the art of thinking. When we wish to fix a new thing in either our own mind… — 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 history of philosophy is, to a great extent, that of a certain clash of human temperaments…Of whatever temperament a philosopher is,… — 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
It is not probable that the reader will be satisfied with any of these solutions, and contemporary philosophers, even rationalistically minded ones,… — William James Copy Share Image
The entire routine of our memorized acquisitions, for example, is a consequence of nothing but the Law of Contiguity. The words of… — William James Copy Share Image
Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it… — William James Copy Share Image
But when all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence and can make their… — William James Copy Share Image
There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account… — 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
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
![“[There are, in us] possibilities that take our breath away, and show a world wider than either physics or philistine ethics can imagine. Here is a world in which all is well, in spite of certain forms of death, death of hope, death of strength, death of responsibility, of fear and wrong, death of…” quote by William James](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/db5/william-james-228_breaths_there-are-in-us-possibilities-that-take_2888048.png)
