Quote

Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.

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
Facts
Neutralized
Religiousness
Devout
Temper
Esteem
Scientific
Almost
Religious

More quotes by William James

Image
We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.
William James
Image
Philosophy, beginning in wonder, as Plato and Aristotle said, is able to fancy everything different from what it is. It sees the familiar as if it were strange, and the strange as if it were familiar. It can take things up and lay them down again. It rouses us from our native dogmatic slumber and breaks up our caked prejudices.
William James
Image
Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible ... faith is the readiness to act in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified to us in advance.
William James
Image
Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
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
The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.
William James
Image
An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.
William James
Image
There can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and said his say.
William James
Image
[T]here is very little difference between one person and another, but what little difference ther eis, is very important.
William James
Image
Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law.
William James
Image
It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
William James
Image
Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.
William James
Image
'What would be better for us to believe!' This sounds very like a definition of truth
William James
Image
Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.
William James
Image
The good we do today becomes the happiness of tomorrow.
William James
Image
The emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.
William James
Image
There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.
William James
Image
We hear in these days of scientific enlightenment a great deal of discussion about the efficacy of Prayer. Many reasons are given why we should not pray. Others give reasons why we should pray. Very little is said of the reason we do pray. The reason is simple: We pray because we cannot help praying.
William James
Image
To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.
William James
Image
The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.
William James