“Most of us probably fall several times a day into a fit somewhat like this: The eyes are fixed on vacancy, the… — William James Copy Share Image
The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds. — William James Copy Share Image
Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them; and… — 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
The mind of your own enemy, the pupil, is working away from you, as keenly and eagerly as is the mind of… — William James Copy Share Image
Ideas are so much flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives them cognitive lustre. This is why as a pragmatistI have… — William James Copy Share Image
Ingenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil, that tact for the concrete situation, though they are the alpha and omega of the… — 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
Nature in her unfathomable designs had mixed us of clay and flame, of brain and mind, that the two things hang indubitably… — William James Copy Share Image
“What was bright and exciting becomes weary, flat, and unprofitable.” — William James Copy Share Image
The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can change his life by changing his attitude of mind — 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
The greatest discovery of my generation is that human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of his mind. — William James Copy Share Image
The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change… — William James Copy Share Image
The amount of psychology which is necessary to all teachers need not be very great. — William James Copy Share Image
The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the… — William James Copy Share Image
Mental fire is what won't burn real sticks; mental water is what won't necessarily (though of course it may) put out even… — William James Copy Share Image
“An outree explanation, violating all our preconceptions, would never pass for a true account of a novelty. We should scratch round industriously… — William James Copy Share Image
The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as the sculptor works on his block of stone. — 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
“We must judge the tree by its fruit. The best fruits of the religious experience are the best things history has to… — 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
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
