Quote

Philosophy is an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly.

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
Attempt
Clearly
Philosophy
Think
Thinking
Unusually
Stubborn

More quotes by William James

Image
Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits.
William James
Image
The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.
William James
Image
Act in earnest and you will become earnest in all you do.
William James
Image
To leap across an abyss, one is better served by faith than doubt.
William James
Image
Religions have approved themselves they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.
William James
Image
Touch is the alpha and omega of affection.
William James
Image
Success plus Self-esteem equals Pretensions.
William James
Image
When a thing is new, people say: ‘It is not true.’ Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: ‘It is not important.’ Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say: ‘Anyway, it is not new.
William James
Image
So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.
William James
Image
Considering the inner fitness of things, one would rather think that the very first act of a will endowed with freedom should be to sustain the belief in the freedom itself.
William James
Image
One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.
William James
Image
The difference between objective and subjective extension is one of relation to a context solely.
William James
Image
The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics never made a man behave rightly. The most such sciences can do is to help us to catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to behave wrongly and to criticise ourselves more articulately after we have made mistakes.
William James
Image
The strenuous life tastes better
William James
Image
There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.
William James
Image
Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes spiritualism means theaffirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting loose of hope.
William James
Image
Millions of items in the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind --without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos.
William James
Image
With no attempt there can be no failure with no failure no humiliation.
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
If this life is not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight.
William James