William James Quotes - Page 27

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The subjectivist in morals, when his moral feelings are at war with the facts about him, is always free to seek harmony by toningdown the sensitiveness of the feelings.

William James

War, Feelings, Facts

William James (1970). “Essays in Pragmatism”, Simon and Schuster

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Psychology ought certainly to give the teacher radical help.

William James

Teacher, Art, Teaching

William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.12, Nuvision Pubns

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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.

William James

Science, Thinking, Hands

1907 Pragmatism.

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... religious experience, as we have studied it, cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief. The only thingthat it unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace.

William James

Religious, Unions, Belief

William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.468, Library of America

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The amount of psychology which is necessary to all teachers need not be very great.

William James

Teacher, Art, Teaching

William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.17, Nuvision Pubns

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In all primary school work the principle of multiple impressions is well recognized.

William James

Philosophy, Educational, School

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Be patient and sympathetic with the type of mind that cuts a poor figure in examinations. It may, in the long examination which life sets us, come out in the end in better shape than the glib and ready reproducer, its passions being deeper, its purposes more worthy, its combining power less commonplace, and its total mental output consequently more important.

William James

Philosophy, Educational, Passion

William James (2013). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.70, Courier Corporation

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If I should throw down a thousand beans at random upon a table, I could doubtless, by eliminating a sufficient number of them, leave the rest in almost any geometrical pattern you might propose to me, and you might then say that that pattern was the thing prefigured beforehand, and that the other beans were mere irrelevance and packing material. Our dealings with Nature are just like this.

William James

Irrelevance, Numbers, Tables

William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.438, Courier Corporation

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(Five) thinkers since Galileo, each informing his successor of what discoveries his own lifetime had seen achieved, might have passed the torch of science into our hands as we sit here in this room. Indeed, for the matter of that, an audience much smaller than the present one, an audience of some 5 or 6 score people, if each person in it could speak for his own generation, would carry us away to the black unknown of the human species, to days without a document or monument to tell their tale.

William James

Hands, Discovery, People

William James (2016). “William James: Essays and Lectures”, p.268, Routledge

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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.

William James

Apology, Opportunity, Men

William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.134, Booklassic

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The nation blest above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans and empty quacks.

William James

War, Party, Writing

"Essays in Religion and Morality".

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What a teacher needs to know about psychology "might almost be written on the palm of one's hand."

William James

Teacher, Art, Teaching

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The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stoodthere from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.

William James

Block, Thoughtful, Thinking

William James (2012). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.288, Courier Corporation

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Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains; under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core.

William James

Life, Real, Culture

'McClure's Magazine' February 1908, p. 422

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I don't see how an epigram, being a bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ.

William James

Blue, Introduction, Epigrams

William James (2008). “The Letters of William James”, Cosimo, Inc.

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When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries.

William James

Bipolar, Genius, Kind

William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.29, Library of America

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Voices of the glorified urge us onward. They who have passed from the semblances of time to the realities of eternity call upon us to advance. The rest that awaits us invites us forward. We do not pine for our rest before God wills it. We long for no inglorious rest. We are thankful rather for the invaluable training of difficulty, the loving discipline of danger and strife. Yet in the midst of it all the prospect of rest invites us heavenward. Through all, and above all, God cries, "Go forward!" "Come up higher!

William James

Reality, Voice, Discipline

"Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 564, 1895.

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It is not probable that the reader will be satisfied with any of these solutions, and contemporary philosophers, even rationalistically minded ones, have on the whole agreed that no one has intelligibly banished the mystery of fact.

William James

Philosophy, Facts, Philosopher

"Some Problems of Philosophy".

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... A rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those ... truths were really there, would be an irrational rule.

William James

Philosophy, Thinking, Would Be

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... the intellect, everywhere invasive, shows everywhere its shallowing effect.

William James

Intellect, Shows, Effects

William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.449, Library of America

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Compared with men, it is probable that brutes neither attend to abstract characters, nor have associations by similarity. Their thoughts probably pass from one concrete object to its habitual concrete successor far more uniformly than is the case with us. In other words, their associations of ideas are almost exclusively by contiguity. So far, however, as any brute might think by abstract characters instead of by association of con cretes, he would have to be admitted to be a reasoner in the true human sense. How far this may take place is quite uncertain.

William James

Character, Men, Thinking

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General scepticism is the live mental attitude of refusing to conclude. It is a permanent torpor of the will, renewing itself in detail towards each successive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic than you can kill off obstinacy or practical joking.

William James

Attitude, Details, Logic

William James (2015). “The Meaning of Truth: Human Understanding”, p.75, 谷月社

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Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes; spiritualism means theaffirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting loose of hope.

William James

Mean, Cutting, Order

William James (2012). “Pragmatism”, p.41, Courier Corporation

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As long as there are postmen, life will have zest.

William James

Zest, Long, Expectations

"The Brooklyn man who wrote to Gadhafi" by Moni Basu, www.cnn.com. November 14, 2011.

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When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness.

William James

Reality, Broken, Concepts

William James (1977). “A Pluralistic Universe”, p.116, Harvard University Press

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Born: January 11, 1842
Died: August 26, 1910
Occupation: Philosopher
Cite this Page: Citation

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