Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
There is but one unconditional commandment ... to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see.
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
Volunteer
Unconditional
Commandments
Total
Bring
Universe
Helping
Commandment
Good
Largest
More quotes by William James
The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated.
William James
General scepticism is the live mental attitude of refusing to conclude. It is a permanent torpor of the will, renewing itself in detail towards each successive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic than you can kill off obstinacy or practical joking.
William James
Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein.
William James
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions.
William James
Hogamus, higamous Man is polygamous Higamus, hogamous Woman monogamous.
William James
Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
William James
All that we need explicitly to note is that, the more the passive attention is relied on, by keeping the material interesting and the less the kind of attention requiring effort is appealed to the more smoothly and pleasantly the classroom work goes on.
William James
Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. Not through mere perversity do men run after it.
William James
If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first but when once objectified in a crude shape, I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more.
William James
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way.
William James
It is as important to cultivate your silence power as your word power.
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
An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: There is very little difference between one man and another but what little there is, is very important. This distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter.
William James
The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.
William James
Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.
William James
Impulse without reason is enough, and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift.
William James
Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
William James
Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation.
William James
The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns all superior minds feel seriously about them, and the mind with the shortest views is simply the mind of the more shallow man.
William James
Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves ... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
William James
