Quote

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

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
Neither
Constructions
Elements
Exclude
Must
Construction
Element
Directly
Experienced
Admit
Radical
Empiricism

More quotes by William James

Image
The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature.
William James
Image
Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the captivity, but those of the days of Solomon 's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come.
William James
Image
All natural goods perish. Riches take wings fame is a breath love is a cheat youth and health and pleasure vanish.
William James
Image
It is not probable that the reader will be satisfied with any of these solutions, and contemporary philosophers, even rationalistically minded ones, have on the whole agreed that no one has intelligibly banished the mystery of fact.
William James
Image
The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns toward concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power.
William James
Image
Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation.
William James
Image
We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in sight of our fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind.
William James
Image
Our beliefs and our attention are the same fact.
William James
Image
The word 'cause' is an altar to an unknown god.
William James
Image
All the daily routine of life, our dressing and undressing, the coming and going from our work or carrying through of its various operations, is utterly without mental reference to pleasure and pain, except under rarely realized conditions.
William James
Image
To leap across an abyss, one is better served by faith than doubt.
William James
Image
Most men have a good memory for facts connected with their own pursuits.
William James
Image
Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies … and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to keep by force of mere inertia.
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
Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.
William James
Image
When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.
William James
Image
The thinker philosophizes as the lover loves. Even were the consequences not only useless but harmful, he must obey his impulse.
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
The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion.
William James
Image
Faith branches off the highroad before reason begins
William James