Quote

Religion . . . shall mean for us the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude.

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
Individual
Feelings
Mean
Individuality
Men
Acts
Solitude
Experiences
Shall
Religion

More quotes by William James

Image
The first thing that intellect does with an object is to class it with something else.
William James
Image
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
Image
There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other.
William James
Image
We all have a lifelong habit of inferiority to our full self...
William James
Image
Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day.
William James
Image
There is but one unconditional commandment ... to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see.
William James
Image
Our view of the world is truly shaped by what we decide to hear.
William James
Image
Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late.
William James
Image
At bottom, the whole concern of religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe.
William James
Image
I will act as if I do make a difference.
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
We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort.
William James
Image
Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world.
William James
Image
Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics.
William James
Image
Man, biologically considered ... is simply the most formidable of all beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own kind.
William James
Image
Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be they principles, under penalty of endless inconsistency and frustration.
William James
Image
Once you accept an idea, it's an idea whose time has come.
William James
Image
In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.
William James
Image
We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.
William James
Image
From all these facts there emerges a very simple abstract program for the teacher to follow in keeping the attention of the child: Begin with the line of his native interests, and offer him objects that have some immediate connection with these.
William James