William James Quotes
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The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
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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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The most peculiar social self which one is apt to have is in the mind of the person one is in love with.
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Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.
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An impression which simply flows in at the pupil's eyes or ears and in no way modifies his active life, is an impression gone to waste. It is physiologically incomplete... Its motor consequences are what clinch it.
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There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.
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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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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract
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The instant field of the present is at all times what I call the 'pure' experience. It is only virtually or potentially either object or subject as yet.
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Genius is the capacity for seeing relationships where lesser men see none.
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... no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp.
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Procrastination is attitude's natural assassin. There's nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task
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Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.
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A genius is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of attending to anything insipid or distasteful in itself. He breaks his engagements, leaves his letters unanswered, neglects his family duties incorrigibly, because he is powerless to turn his attention down and back from those more interesting trains of imagery with which his genius constantly occupies his mind.
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Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.
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Cramming seeks to stamp things in by intense application immediately before the ordeal. But a thing thus learned can form but few associations.
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Man is essentially the imitative animal. His whole educabilityand in fact the whole history of civilization depend on this trait, which his strong tendencies to rivalry, jealousy, and acquisitiveness reinforce.
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Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.
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...as I apprehend the Buddhist doctrine of karma, I agree in principle with that.
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Selection is the very keel on which our mental ship is built. And in this case of memory its utility is obvious. If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing.
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Deepest principle of human nature is to be appreciated.
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True to her inveterate habit, rationalism reverts to 'principles,' and thinks that when an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular solution.
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A sense of humor is just common sense dancing.
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Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?