Quote

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

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
Way
Individual
Deeply
Life
Means
Honestly
Sense
Pressure
Partly
Feelings
Philosophy
Technical
Book
Seeing
Cosmos
Matter
Books
Push
Mean
Feeling
Dumb
Important
Less
Total

More quotes by William James

Image
Equality is attainable as long as you are part of the majority.
William James
Image
We hear in these days of scientific enlightenment a great deal of discussion about the efficacy of Prayer. Many reasons are given why we should not pray. Others give reasons why we should pray. Very little is said of the reason we do pray. The reason is simple: We pray because we cannot help praying.
William James
Image
If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill. But more important than that, practicing this philosophy has made a different person of me.
William James
Image
I wished by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her become one.
William James
Image
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
Image
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
William James
Image
In all this process of acquiring conceptions, a certain instinctive order is followed. There is a native tendency to assimilate certain kinds of conception at one age, and other kinds of conception at a later age.
William James
Image
There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough.
William James
Image
Volition . . . takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and depends on our having a complex field of consciousness.
William James
Image
As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
William James
Image
I take it that no man is educated who has never dallied with the thought of suicide.
William James
Image
In all primary school work the principle of multiple impressions is well recognized.
William James
Image
To know an object is to lead to it through a context which the world provides
William James
Image
Habit is the great flywheel of society.
William James
Image
The impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race.
William James
Image
Religions have approved themselves they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.
William James
Image
We with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground.
William James
Image
Instinct leads, logic does but follow.
William James
Image
Most men have a good memory for facts connected with their own pursuits.
William James
Image
The difference between an interesting and a tedious teacher consists in little more than the inventiveness by which the one is able to mediate these associations and connections, and in the dullness in discovering such transitions which the other shows.
William James