William James Quotes
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On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.
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Life shall be built in doing and suffering and creating.
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You make a great, very great mistake, if you think that psychology, being the science of the mind's laws, is something from which you can deduce definite programmes and schemes and methods of instruction for immediate schoolroom use.
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For I had often said that the best argument I knew for an immortal life was the existence of a man who deserved one as well as Child did.
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If an unusual necessity forces us onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain point, when, gradually or suddenly, it passes away and we are fresher than before!
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Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity.
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We have nothing to do but to receive, resting absolutely upon the merit, power, and love of our Redeemer.
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There must always be a discrepncy between concepts and reality, because the former are static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing
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Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived from twitching of frogs' legs (especially if the frogs are decapitated) and that, on the other hand, any doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of human beings (with heads on their shoulders) must be benighted and superstitious.
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We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and as carefully guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous.
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The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains; and the 'evolution' of brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms came to be so caught and jammed.
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Procrastination is attitude's natural assassin. There's nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task
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Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors.
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Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose.
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All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.
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The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.
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Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.
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Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.
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Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet.
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The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds.
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... the intellect, everywhere invasive, shows everywhere its shallowing effect.
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The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.
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Deepest principle of human nature is to be appreciated.
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Truth is what will be steadily borne out by subsequent experience