Quote

The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.

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
Away
Stagnates
Without
Sympathy
Individuality
Impulse
Friendship
Dies
Community
Individual

More quotes by William James

Image
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
Image
... I am the same personal being who in old times upon the Earth had those experiences.
William James
Image
We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyse them.
William James
Image
A paradise of inward tranquility seems to be faith's usual result.
William James
Image
The first thing that intellect does with an object is to class it with something else.
William James
Image
Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.
William James
Image
To know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teacher.
William James
Image
Better risk loss of truth than chance of error--that is your faith-vetoer's exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field.
William James
Image
Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue.
William James
Image
The good we do today becomes the happiness of tomorrow.
William James
Image
I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds.
William James
Image
Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience they will lead him nowhere or else make false connections
William James
Image
A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.
William James
Image
No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.
William James
Image
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
William James
Image
Most unhappiness is caused because people listen to themselves... instead of talking to themselves.
William James
Image
O my Bergson, you are a magician, and your book is a marvel, a real wonder in the history of philosophy . . . In finishing it I found . . . such a flavor of persistent euphony, as of a rich river that never foamed or ran thin, but steadily and firmly proceeded with its banks full to the brim.
William James
Image
What excites and interests the looker-on at life, what the romances and the statues celebrate, and the grim civic monuments remind us of, is the everlasting battle of the powers of light with those of darkness with heroism reduced to its bare chance, yet ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws of death.
William James
Image
If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first but when once objectified in a crude shape, I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more.
William James
Image
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation.
William James