Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
An idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort of a mental total.
William James
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Ideas
Philosophy
Sort
Literature
Infect
Interest
Associated
Idea
Educational
Another
Total
Become
Mental
Together
Emotional
More quotes by William James
Pessimism leads to weakness. Optimism leads to power.
William James
For morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers.
William James
I have often thought the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it comes upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: This is the real me!.
William James
The deepest hunger in human beings is the desire to be appreciated.
William James
To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.
William James
Our acts of voluntary attending, as brief and fitful as they are, are nevertheless momentous and critical, determining us, as they do, to higher or lower destinies.
William James
It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
William James
The philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means. It is only partly got from books it is our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos.
William James
Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.
William James
Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the captivity, but those of the days of Solomon 's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come.
William James
I am, myself, a very poor visualizer and find that I can seldom call to mind even a single letter of the alphabet in purely retinal terms. I must trace the letter by running my mental eye over its contour in order that the image of it shall leave any distinctness at all.
William James
The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will... An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence.
William James
I will act as if I do make a difference.
William James
Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late.
William James
We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.
William James
Every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge.
William James
Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.
William James
It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk.
William James
The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.
William James
Our life is always deeper than we know, is always more divine than it seems, and hence we are able to survive degradations and despairs which otherwise must engulf us.
William James
