Quote

Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.

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
Copies
Advance
Sensible
Guide
Particulars
Guides
Copy
Thoughts
Beneficial
Whether
Occur
Truth
Interaction

More quotes by William James

Image
The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics never made a man behave rightly. The most such sciences can do is to help us to catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to behave wrongly and to criticise ourselves more articulately after we have made mistakes.
William James
Image
The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes.
William James
Image
I am tired of the position of the dried-up critic and doubter. The believer is the true full man. (from a biography of James by Robert D. Richardson)
William James
Image
If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed.
William James
Image
Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.
William James
Image
To change one's life: a. Start immediately b. B. Do it flamboyantly c. No exceptions Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted.
William James
Image
A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.
William James
Image
It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk.
William James
Image
You can alter your life by altering the state of your mind.
William James
Image
Footnotes -- little dogs yapping at the heels of the text
William James
Image
Truth is something that happens to an idea.
William James
Image
The love of life, at any and every level of development, is the religious impulse.
William James
Image
To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.
William James
Image
The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds.
William James
Image
We have nothing to do but to receive, resting absolutely upon the merit, power, and love of our Redeemer.
William James
Image
Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.
William James
Image
The prescription is that the subject must be made to show new aspects of itself to prompt new questions in a word, to change. From an unchanging subject the attention inevitably wanders away.
William James
Image
History is a bath of blood.
William James
Image
Time itself comes in drops.
William James
Image
As the brain-changes are continuous, so do all these consciousnesses melt into each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but one protracted consciousness, one unbroken stream.
William James