Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Our volitional habits depend, then, first, on what the stock of ideas is which we have and, second, on the habitual coupling of the several ideas with action or inaction respectively.
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
Literature
Habits
Action
Depend
Ideas
Several
Volitional
Firsts
Educational
Respectively
First
Habit
Coupling
Depends
Inaction
Second
Habitual
Philosophy
Stock
More quotes by William James
Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience they will lead him nowhere or else make false connections
William James
Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies … and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to keep by force of mere inertia.
William James
My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing, and I can only do one thing at a time.
William James
Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely leave the result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation.
William James
With no attempt there can be no failure with no failure no humiliation.
William James
We can change our circumstances by a mere change of our attitude.
William James
Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
William James
Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics.
William James
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
The aim of science is always to reduce complexity to simplicity.
William James
Intelligence is a fixed goal with variable means of achieving it.
William James
Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation.
William James
In this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a view of things is 'noble,' that ought to count as presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic disqualification. The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman.
William James
Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.
William James
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
The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.
William James
There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough.
William James
A good hypothesis in science must have other properties than those of the phenomenon it is immediately invoked to explain, otherwise it is not prolific enough.
William James
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
A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.
William James
