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
All of our life is but a mass of small habits - practical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual - that bear us irresistibly… — William James Copy Share Image
In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering. — William James Copy Share Image
General scepticism is the live mental attitude of refusing to conclude. It is a permanent torpor of the will, renewing itself in… — 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
Don't preach too much to your pupils or abound in good talk in the abstract. Lie in wait rather for the practical… — 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
True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. That is the… — William James Copy Share Image
It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic… — William James Copy Share Image
Of course, this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become permanent drunkards by so may separate… — William James Copy Share Image
Every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost; it… — William James Copy Share Image
We must frankly confess, then, using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actually is, the… — William James Copy Share Image
You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience. — 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
