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A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.

William James

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William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Social
Self
Many
Socializing
Men
Selves
Individuals
Recognize
Individual

More quotes by William James

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The exercise of prayer, in those who habitually exert it, must be regarded by us doctors as the most adequate and normal of all the pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the nerves.
William James
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I have often thought the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it comes upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: This is the real me!.
William James
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We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We postpone and postpone until those smiling possibilities are dead... By neglecting the necessary concrete labor, by sparing ourselves the little daily tax, we are positively digging the graves of our higher possibilities.
William James
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The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example to work on others as it may.
William James
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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
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Each of us is in fact what he is almost exclusively by virtue of his imitative-ness.
William James
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... the intellect, everywhere invasive, shows everywhere its shallowing effect.
William James
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Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.
William James
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The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.
William James
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A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock
William James
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We with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground.
William James
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Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?
William James
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It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.
William James
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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be they principles, under penalty of endless inconsistency and frustration.
William James
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You make a great, very great mistake, if you think that psychology, being the science of the mind's laws, is something from which you can deduce definite programmes and schemes and methods of instruction for immediate schoolroom use.
William James
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Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life.
William James
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Our theories are wedged and controlled as nothing else is. Yet sometimes alternative theoretic formulas are equally compatible with all the truths we know, and then we choose between them for subjective reasons. We choose the kind of theory to which we are already partial: we follow 'elegenace' or 'economy'
William James
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... A rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those ... truths were really there, would be an irrational rule.
William James
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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
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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract
William James