Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.
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
Upon
Stills
Bulwark
Still
Civic
People
Civics
Trial
Trials
Genius
Democracy
More quotes by 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
No living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody.
William James
The good or bad is not in the circumstance, but only in the mind...that encounters it.
William James
We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. ...Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.
William James
Conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity.
William James
To be fertile in hypotheses is the first perquisite of creativity and to be willing to throw them away the moment experience contradicts them is the next.
William James
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.
William James
As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
William James
Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.
William James
The study a posteriori of the distribution of consciousness shows it to be exactly such as we might expect in an organ added for the sake of steering a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself.
William James
Evil is a disease and worry over disease is itself an additional form of disease, which only adds to the original complaint.
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
If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain 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
We are mere bundles of habits.
William James
Most men's friendships are too inarticulate.
William James
If you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly attain it. Only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.
William James
Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts' themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.
William James
From a pragmatic point of view, the difference between living against a background of foreigness (an indifferent Universe) and one of intimacy (a benevolent Universe) means the difference between a general habit of wariness and one of trust.
William James
Deepest principle of human nature is to be appreciated.
William James
