Quote

Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation.

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
Way
Ways
Fact
Words
Lives
Facts
Formulation
Truth
Verbal
Wells
Exceed
Well
Philosophy

More quotes by William James

Image
We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can. . . . The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.
William James
Image
The most peculiar social self which one is apt to have is in the mind of the person one is in love with.
William James
Image
Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.
William James
Image
As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
William James
Image
From the Vedas we learn a practical art of surgery, medicine, music, house building under which mechanized art is included. They are encyclopedia of every aspect of life, culture, religion, science, ethics, law, cosmology and meteorology.
William James
Image
When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome.
William James
Image
As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
William James
Image
If an unusual necessity forces us onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain point, when, gradually or suddenly, it passes away and we are fresher than before!
William James
Image
If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill.
William James
Image
I don't see how an epigram, being a bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ.
William James
Image
The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
William James
Image
Despair lames most people, but it wakes others fully up.
William James
Image
The impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race.
William James
Image
I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave.
William James
Image
Mental fire is what won't burn real sticks mental water is what won't necessarily (though of course it may) put out even a mentalfire.
William James
Image
The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.
William James
Image
It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
William James
Image
When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries.
William James
Image
Footnotes -- little dogs yapping at the heels of the text
William James
Image
The subjectivist in morals, when his moral feelings are at war with the facts about him, is always free to seek harmony by toningdown the sensitiveness of the feelings.
William James