William James Quotes

The function of ignoring, of inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the function of attention itself.

William James

• Mind
• Science
• Attention
• Progress

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Quotes to Explore

• Republicans rarely criticize Obama for lack of empathy - in part because liberals have traditionally been seen as standing up for the weak and the vulnerable. Conservatives can be just as empathetic. But they believe that, in most cases, it's not government's role to be the primary dispenser of empathy.

  

  Gary Bauer
  • Up
  • Believe
  • Government

• General Giap was one of the most brilliant military strategists of our era, who in Dien Bien Phu was able to place missile launchers in remote, mountainous jungles, something the yankee and European military officers considered impossible.

  

  Fidel Castro
  • Military
  • Place
  • Impossible

• Up until the end of the Bush Administration, there was indifference to the North Korean suffering under Kim Jong-Il.

  

  Ed Royce
  • Up
  • Suffering
  • End

• I build community. However, I do it wearing a number of hats.

  

  Cameron Sinclair
  • Community
  • Build
  • Hats

• I love to be with my son and my grandchildren, like normal people. I have no particular idea of what I represent to other people. It's very mysterious to me. I don't understand it.

  

  Omar Sharif
  • People
  • Love
  • Son

• Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

  

  Edmund Burke
  • Free
  • Justice
  • Trade

• I think if I heard someone else talking about their life, describing all the problems I've had, they'd look like they were through. Done. But there's something about me - I'm smiling. Those things are really not bad enough to put me in a slump. I'm smiling with the opportunity to wake up every morning.

  

  Nas
  • Life
  • Up
  • Done

• Brandon Boyd of Incubus is hot, but he's too pretty.

  

  Rachel Perry
  • Pretty
  • Hot
  • Too

• I am interested in the way that we look at a given landscape and take possession of it in our blood and brain. None of us lives apart from the land entirely; such an isolation is unimaginable.

  

  N. Scott Momaday
  • Land
  • Landscape
  • Isolation

• When I was 13, I started working in a nightclub with Ray Charles. That's the greatest school in the world, the school of the streets. Ray taught me how to read in Braille. He was only two years older than me, but it was like he was 100 years older.

  

  Quincy Jones
  • World
  • School
  • Greatest

• The older you get, the more comfortable you become with yourself, and you accept what you have physically.

  

  Victoria Beckham Spice Girls
  • You
  • Yourself
  • Accept

• It may well be our brains are wired up to be slightly more optimistic than they should be.

  

  Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
  • Up
  • May
  • More

• I told my agent which women I aspire to have a career like: Frances McDormand, Kate Winslet, Laura Linney and Emma Thompson - character actresses who have something to say. I also said that I loved Madeline Kahn and Jessica Lange.

  

  Rachael Harris
  • Women
  • Character
  • Career

• What has history said of eminence without honor, wealth without wisdom, power and possessions without principle? The answer is reiterated in the overthrow of the mightiest empires of ancient times. Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome! The four successive, universal powers of the past. What and where are they?

  

  Orson F. Whitney
  • Power
  • History
  • Past

• If I'm so popular, why did they replace me with Tommy Thayer?

  

  Ace Frehley Kiss
  • Why
  • Me
  • Popular

• I would love to work with Matt Damon.

  

  Idina Menzel
  • Work
  • Love
  • Would

• I don't know anyone who likes the American League games better. Maybe some fans do. But if you're not an actual DH, you probably prefer the National League.

  

  Zack Greinke
  • American
  • Know
  • Better

• To compare Olympic sport with cricket would not be fair. Years back, cricket was a sport only for the classes, and we will also have to make other sports masses from classes like cricket.

  

  Gagan Narang
  • Sports
  • Years
  • Cricket

• Further, the dignity of the science itself seems to require that every possible means be explored for the solution of a problem so elegant and so celebrated.

  

  Carl Friedrich Gauss
  • Science
  • Problem
  • Solution

• The sad thing is, people don't want to believe that the person they're in love with is out of his mind, drinking and using, so if you give them even half an excuse, they're going to want to believe it.

  

  Anthony Kiedis Red Hot Chili Peppers
  • Believe
  • Mind
  • Excuse

• Just as a chemist "isolates" a substance from contaminations that distort his view of its nature and effects, so the work of art purifies significant appearance. It presents abstract themes in their generality, but not reduced to diagrams.

  

  Rudolf Arnheim
  • Art
  • Science
  • Appearance

• My appeal to the rich is, Deal liberally with your poor brethren, and use your means to advance the cause of God. The worthy poor, who are made poor by misfortune and sickness, deserve your especial care and help.

  

  Ellen G. White
  • God
  • Help

• The thing is, that when you're young, you always think you'll meet all sorts of wonderful people, that drifting apart and losing friends is natural. You don't worry, at first, about the friends you leave behind. But as you get older, it gets harder to build friendships. Too many defenses, too little opportunity. You get busy. And by the time you realize that you've lost the dearest best friend you've ever had, years have gone by and you're mature enough to be embarrassed by your attitude and, frankly, by your arrogance.

  

  Kate Jacobs
  • People
  • Thinking
  • Opportunity

• The function of ignoring, of inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the function of attention itself.

  

  William James
  • Mind
  • Science
  • Attention