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A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.
William James
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William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
First
Vision
Everybody
Idea
Dismissed
Inspirational
Trivial
Dream
Condemned
Change
Ridiculous
Ideas
Finally
Firsts
Becomes
More quotes by William James
As Charles Lamb says, there is nothing so nice as doing good by stealth and being found out by accident, so I now say it is even nicer to make heroic decisions and to be prevented by 'circumstances beyond your control' from ever trying to execute them.
William James
...These healers...my intellect has been unable to assimilate their theories....But their facts are patent and startling and anything that interferes with the multiplication of such facts, and with our freest opportunity of observing and studying them, will, I believe, be a public calamity.
William James
Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation.
William James
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
William James
You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience.
William James
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
The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
William James
Evil is a disease and worry over disease is itself an additional form of disease, which only adds to the original complaint.
William James
With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.
William James
Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.
William James
There can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and said his say.
William James
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
To some of us the thought of God is like a sort of quiet music playing in the background of the mind.
William James
Why may we not be in the universe, as our dogs and cats are in our drawingrooms and libraries?
William James
If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed.
William James
Better risk loss of truth than chance of error--that is your faith-vetoer's exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field.
William James
The teacher's prime concern should be to ingrain into the pupil that assortment of habits that shall be most useful to him throughout life. Education is for behavior, and habits are the stuff of which behavior consists.
William James
The greatest discovery of the 20th Century is that our attitude of mind determines our quality of life, not circumstances.
William James
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
The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.
William James
