An experience, perceptual or conceptual, must conform to reality in order to be true — William James Copy Share Image
Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract — William James Copy Share Image
Thoughts become perception, perception becomes reality. Alter your thoughts, alter your reality. — 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… — William James Copy Share Image
We need only in cold blood to act as if the thing in question were real and it will infallibly end by… — William James Copy Share Image
If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on… — William James Copy Share Image
Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be they principles, under penalty of… — William James Copy Share Image
Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means… — William James Copy Share Image
When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness. — William James Copy Share Image
There must always be a discrepncy between concepts and reality, because the former are static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic… — 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
Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something.… — 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
... if we take the universe of 'fitting,' countless coats 'fit' backs, and countless boots 'fit' feet, on which they are not… — William James Copy Share Image
When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of… — William James Copy Share Image
Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed. which give… — William James Copy Share Image
It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of… — 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
That reality is 'independent' means that there is something in every experience that escapes our arbitrary control. If it be a sensible… — William James Copy Share Image
Voices of the glorified urge us onward. They who have passed from the semblances of time to the realities of eternity call… — William James Copy Share Image
Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism. In heroism, we feel, life's… — William James Copy Share Image
It does not follow, because our ancestors made so many errors of fact and mixed them with their religion, that we should… — William James Copy Share Image
Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism. — 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
