William James Quotes
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Lets take full advantage of this discovery
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We ought, all of us, to realize each other in this intense, pathetic, and important way. If you say that this is absurd, and that we cannot be in love with everyone at once, I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people's lives; and that such persons know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big.
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We and God have business with each other, and in opening ourselves to God's influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled.
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All natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it.
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Failure, then, failure! so the world stamps us at every turn. We strew it with our blunders, our misdeeds, our lost opportunities, with all the memorials of our inadequacy to our vocation. And with what a damning emphasis does it then blot us out! No easy fine, no mere apology or formal expiation, will satisfy the world's demands, but every pound of flesh exacted is soaked with all its blood. The subtlest forms of suffering known to man are connected with the poisonous humiliations incidental to these results.
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If you want a confidence, act as if you already have it. Try the "as if" technique.
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If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.
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All that we need explicitly to note is that, the more the passive attention is relied on, by keeping the material interesting; and the less the kind of attention requiring effort is appealed to; the more smoothly and pleasantly the classroom work goes on.
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O my Bergson, you are a magician, and your book is a marvel, a real wonder in the history of philosophy . . . In finishing it I found . . . such a flavor of persistent euphony, as of a rich river that never foamed or ran thin, but steadily and firmly proceeded with its banks full to the brim.
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I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds.
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Divinity lies all around us, but society remains too hidebound to accept that fact...The mother sea and the fountain-head of all religions lies in the mystical experiences of the individual.
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We are proud of a human nature that could be so passionately extreme, but we shrink from advising others to follow the example.
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The most ancient parts of truth . . . also once were plastic. They also were called true for human reasons. They also mediated between still earlier truths and what in those days were novel observations. Purely objective truth, truth in whose establishment the function of giving human satisfaction in marrying previous parts of experience with newer parts played no role whatsoever, is nowhere to be found. The reasons why we call things true is the reason why they are true, for to be true means only to perform this marriage-function.
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We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.
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The man whose acquisitions stick is the man who is always achieving and advancing whilst his neighbors, spending most of their time in relearning what they once knew but have forgotten, simply hold their own.
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The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
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When a thing is new, people say: ‘It is not true.’ Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: ‘It is not important.’ Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say: ‘Anyway, it is not new.
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Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions.
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To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.
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Faith is one of the forces by which men live, and the total absence of it means collapse
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Psychology ought certainly to give the teacher radical help.
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Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. Not through mere perversity do men run after it.
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There is but one unconditional commandment ... to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see.
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True is the name for whatever idea starts the verification process, useful is the name for its completed function in experience