Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.
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
Among
Poverty
Worst
Prevalent
Class
Suffers
Moral
Classes
Suffering
Educated
Fear
Disease
Civilization
More quotes by William James
Our intelligence cannot wall itself up alive, like a pupa in a chrysalis. It must at any cost keep on speaking terms with the universe that engendered it.
William James
This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.
William James
The first thing that intellect does with an object is to class it with something else.
William James
...as I apprehend the Buddhist doctrine of karma, I agree in principle with that.
William James
Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.
William James
In this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a view of things is 'noble,' that ought to count as presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic disqualification. The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman.
William James
The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.
William James
An impression which simply flows in at the pupil's eyes or ears and in no way modifies his active life, is an impression gone to waste. It is physiologically incomplete... Its motor consequences are what clinch it.
William James
Everyone knows that on any given day there are energies slumbering in him which the incitement's of that day do not call forth. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. The human individual usually lives far within his limits.
William James
Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.
William James
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
A man of sense is never discouraged by difficulties he redoubles his industry and his diligence, he perseveres and infallibly prevails at last.
William James
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
Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive.
William James
We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.
William James
Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.
William James
Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make very small use of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger.
William James
When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion, action will.
William James
Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction
William James
The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated.
William James
