Quote

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

William James

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Differences
Causes
Savage
Choices
Savages
Good
Fierce
Men
Choice
Difference
Cause
Ready

More quotes by William James

Image
We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyse them.
William James
Image
The first lecture in psychology that I ever heard was the first I ever gave.
William James
Image
We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.
William James
Image
The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
William James
Image
If any one phrase could gather its (religion's) universal message, that phrase would be, - All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may suggest.
William James
Image
To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.
William James
Image
Truth is what will be steadily borne out by subsequent experience
William James
Image
As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different pace of its parts. Like a bird 's life, it seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings.
William James
Image
Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.
William James
Image
An experience, perceptual or conceptual, must conform to reality in order to be true
William James
Image
Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law.
William James
Image
We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.
William James
Image
Despair lames most people, but it wakes others fully up.
William James
Image
A great idea goes through three stages on its way to acceptance: 1) it is dismissed as nonsense, 2) it is acknowledged as true, but insignificant, 3) finally, it is seen to be important, but not really anything new.
William James
Image
The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.
William James
Image
My experience is what I agree to attend to.
William James
Image
But it is the bane of psychology to suppose that where results are similar, processes must be the same. Psychologists are too apt to reason as geometers would, if the latter were to say that the diameter of a circle is the same thing as its semi-circumference, because, forsooth, they terminate in the same two points.
William James
Image
Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void.
William James
Image
Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.
William James
Image
Men's activities are occupied into ways -- in grappling with external circumstances and in striving to set things at one in their own topsy-turvy mind.
William James