Quote

Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.

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
Ought
Philosophy
Half
Compared
Awake
Philosophical

More quotes by William James

Image
Footnotes -- little dogs yapping at the heels of the text
William James
Image
The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.
William James
Image
There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere.
William James
Image
Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract
William James
Image
Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.
William James
Image
But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them theyare sure to combine.
William James
Image
... the intellect, everywhere invasive, shows everywhere its shallowing effect.
William James
Image
A thing is important if anyone think it important.
William James
Image
Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this world's life
William James
Image
So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.
William James
Image
There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness.
William James
Image
When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness.
William James
Image
True is the name for whatever idea starts the verification process, useful is the name for its completed function in experience
William James
Image
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
Image
Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. ... From time immemorial war has been ... the supremely thrilling excitement.
William James
Image
Emotional occasions, especially violent ones, are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements. The sudden and explosive ways in which love, jealousy, guilt, fear, remorse, or anger can seize upon one are known to everybody. . . . And emotions that come in this explosive way seldom leave things as they found them.
William James
Image
The work that leads to a doctor's degree is a constant temptation to sacrifice one's growth as a man to one's growth as a specialist.
William James
Image
The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature.
William James
Image
A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description.
William James
Image
The unrest which keeps the never stopping clock of metaphysics going is the thought that the nonexistence of this world is just as possible as its existence.
William James