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I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds.
William James
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William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Thing
Gentleman
Way
Several
World
Philosopher
Determine
Perspective
Gentlemen
Philosophy
Determines
Interesting
Ladies
Important
Worlds
More quotes by William James
The trail of the human serpent is thus over everything.
William James
If evolution and the survival of the fittest be true at all, the destruction of prey and of human rivals must have been among the most important. . . . It is just because human bloodthirstiness is such a primitive part of us that it is so hard to eradicate, especially when a fight or a hunt is promised as part of the fun.
William James
The greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes.
William James
Intelligence is a fixed goal with variable means of achieving it.
William James
True is the name for whatever idea starts the verification process, useful is the name for its completed function in experience
William James
Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being.
William James
The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.
William James
Life is one long struggle between conclusions based on abstract ways of conceiving cases, and opposite conclusions prompted by our instinctive perception of them.
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
The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
William James
I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave.
William James
Science herself consults her heart when she lays it down that the infinite ascertainment of fact and correction of false belief are the supreme goods for man.
William James
A paradise of inward tranquility seems to be faith's usual result.
William James
It is art that makes life, and I know of no substitute whatsoever for the force and beauty of its process.
William James
The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.
William James
Psychology is a science, and teaching is an art and sciences never generate arts directly out of themselves.
William James
The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
William James
A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description.
William James
Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make very small use of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger.
William James
We do not sing because we are happy, we are happy because we sing.
William James
