Quote

There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough.

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
Science
Cannot
Truth
Nothing
Repeated
Enough
Absurd
Believed
Belief
Often

More quotes by William James

Image
Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night.
William James
Image
We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyse them.
William James
Image
Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
William James
Image
There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere.
William James
Image
It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk.
William James
Image
To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.
William James
Image
Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core.
William James
Image
Real servants don't try to use God for their purposes. They let God use them for His purposes.
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
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
William James
Image
Philosophy, beginning in wonder, as Plato and Aristotle said, is able to fancy everything different from what it is. It sees the familiar as if it were strange, and the strange as if it were familiar. It can take things up and lay them down again. It rouses us from our native dogmatic slumber and breaks up our caked prejudices.
William James
Image
The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature.
William James
Image
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.
William James
Image
Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.
William James
Image
Most men's friendships are too inarticulate.
William James
Image
But petitional prayer is only one department of prayer and if we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every kind of inward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine, we can easily see that scientific criticism leaves it untouched. Prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion.
William James
Image
Strength is a facade for the proud, weakness is a mask for the lazy.
William James
Image
The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.
William James
Image
We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can...in the acquisition of a new habit, we must take car to launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative as possible. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.
William James
Image
Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void.
William James