Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Never
Statements
Would
Opposite
Opposites
Import
Fully
Unfaithful
Notion
Imports
Clear
Untrue
True
Grasp
Truth
Statement
More quotes by William James
Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain.
William James
The desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption.
William James
We can change our circumstances by a mere change of our attitude.
William James
You perceive now, my friends, what your general or abstract duty is as teachers. Although you have to generate in your pupils a large stock of ideas, any one of which may be inhibitory, yet you must also see to it that no habitual hesitancy or paralysis of the will ensues, and that the pupil still retains his power of vigorous action.
William James
To know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teacher.
William James
Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.
William James
We divert our attention from disease and death as much as we can the slaughterhouses are huddled out of sight and never mentioned, so that the world we recognize officially in literature and in society is a poetic fiction far handsomer, cleaner and better than the world that really is.
William James
Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism.
William James
I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are IMPOSSIBLE.
William James
When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.
William James
The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.
William James
The good or bad is not in the circumstance, but only in the mind...that encounters it.
William James
Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics.
William James
We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and as carefully guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous.
William James
True is the name for whatever idea starts the verification process, useful is the name for its completed function in experience
William James
I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.
William James
We can act as if there were a God feel as if we were free consider Nature as if she were full of special designs lay plans as if we were to be immortal and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.
William James
The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains and the 'evolution' of brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms came to be so caught and jammed.
William James
If an unusual necessity forces us onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain point, when, gradually or suddenly, it passes away and we are fresher than before!
William James
Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely leave the result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation.
William James
