Quote

A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates.

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
Unprofitable
Mates
Philosophy
Possible
Social
Men

More quotes by William James

Image
Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.
William James
Image
Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess.
William James
Image
Belief is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements for the solace and private pleasure of the believer . . . It is wrong always, everywhere, and for every one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
William James
Image
What a magnificent land and race is this Britain! Everything about them is of better quality than the corresponding thing in the U.S.... Yet I believe (or suspect) that ours is eventually the bigger destiny, if we can only succeed in living up to it.
William James
Image
Our faith is faith in someone else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case.
William James
Image
No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression, -this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget.
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
The study a posteriori of the distribution of consciousness shows it to be exactly such as we might expect in an organ added for the sake of steering a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself.
William James
Image
Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.
William James
Image
Men are now proud of belonging to a conquering nation, and without a murmur they lay down their persons and their wealth, if by so doing they may fend off subjection.
William James
Image
Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.
William James
Image
We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.
William James
Image
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
Image
When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness.
William James
Image
We can change our circumstances by a mere change of our attitude.
William James
Image
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
Image
It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk.
William James
Image
In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who has spoken to us, trying to make the next step in our reasoning. But somehow we cannot start.
William James
Image
The bottom of being is left logically opaque to us, a datum in the strict sense of the word, something we simply come upon and find, and about which (if we wish to act) we should pause and wonder as little as possible. In this confession lies the lasting truth of empiricism.
William James
Image
Effort is a measure of a Man.
William James