Quote

If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.

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
Sickness
Sick
Failing
Becomes
Potentialities
Organism
Fulfill
Organisms
Fails

More quotes by William James

Image
All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows that the service of the collectivity that owns him needs them. If proud of the collectivity, his own pride rises in proportion. No collectivity is like an army for nourishing such pride.
William James
Image
As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
William James
Image
Religious awe is the same organic thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain gorge.
William James
Image
Life shall be built in doing and suffering and creating.
William James
Image
There is a voice inside which speaks and says, This is the real me!
William James
Image
Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
William James
Image
An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: There is very little difference between one man and another but what little there is, is very important. This distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter.
William James
Image
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way.
William James
Image
There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker if sad, it must not scream or curse.
William James
Image
To consider hypotheses is surely always better than to dogmatize ins blaue hinein
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
How many of us persist in a precipitate course which, but for a moment of heedlessness we might never have entered upon, simply because we hate to change our minds.
William James
Image
We can change our circumstances by a mere change of our attitude.
William James
Image
The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature.
William James
Image
To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.
William James
Image
On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.
William James
Image
Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract
William James
Image
Our view of the world is truly shaped by what we decide to hear.
William James
Image
Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein.
William James
Image
The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.
William James