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
Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark. — William James Copy Share Image
The most ancient parts of truth . . . also once were plastic. They also were called true for human reasons. They… — William James Copy Share Image
To begin with, our knowledge grows in spots. The spots may be large or small, but the knowledge ever grows all over...… — William James Copy Share Image
Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil… — William James Copy Share Image
To begin with our knowledge grows in spots. ..What you first gain, ... is probably a small amount of new information, a… — William James Copy Share Image
We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may… — William James Copy Share Image
You perceive now, my friends, what your general or abstract duty is as teachers. Although you have to generate in your pupils… — William James Copy Share Image
Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible ... faith is the readiness to act in a cause… — 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
