Quote

The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.

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
Moral
Classes
Suffering
Educated
Fear
Disease
Civilization
Among
Poverty
Worst
Prevalent
Class
Suffers

More quotes by William James

Image
Experience, as we know, has a way of boiling over, and making us correct our present formulas.
William James
Image
Strength is a facade for the proud, weakness is a mask for the lazy.
William James
Image
There is no being capable of a spiritual life who does not have within him a jungle. Where the wolf constantly HOWLS and the OBSCENE bird of night chatters endlessly.
William James
Image
So it is with children who learn to read fluently and well: They begin to take flight into whole new worlds as effortlessly as young birds take to the sky.
William James
Image
First... a new theory is attacked as absurd then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.
William James
Image
The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.
William James
Image
To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.
William James
Image
In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly.
William James
Image
To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.
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
This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed.
William James
Image
We can change our circumstances by a mere change of our attitude.
William James
Image
Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
William James
Image
The true'to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.
William James
Image
Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification processes
William James
Image
Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture.
William James
Image
Philosophy is an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly.
William James
Image
The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.
William James
Image
Cramming seeks to stamp things in by intense application immediately before the ordeal. But a thing thus learned can form but few associations.
William James
Image
The greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes.
William James