Quote

When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries.

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
Possible
Superior
Individual
Superiors
Coalesce
Best
Effective
Biographical
Kind
Condition
Dictionaries
Intellect
Psychopathic
Genius
Bipolar
Gets
Dictionary
Conditions
Temperament

More quotes by William James

Image
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
Image
The perfection of rottenness.
William James
Image
An educated memory depends on an organized system of associations and its goodness depends on two of their peculiarities: first, on the persistency of the associations and, second, on their number.
William James
Image
Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.
William James
Image
Between what a man calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw. We feel and act about certain things that are ours very much as we feel and act about ourselves.
William James
Image
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
Image
Give your dreams all you've got, and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.
William James
Image
Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation.
William James
Image
Genius is the capacity for seeing relationships where lesser men see none.
William James
Image
Great indeed is Fear but it is not, as our military enthusiasts believe and try to make us believe, the only stimulus known for awakening the higher ranges of men's spiritual energy.
William James
Image
The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.
William James
Image
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
William James
Image
Instinct leads, logic does but follow.
William James
Image
To kill time is not murder, it's suicide.
William James
Image
Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract
William James
Image
Ideas are so much flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives them cognitive lustre. This is why as a pragmatistI have so carefully posited 'reality' ab initio, and why throughout my whole discussion, I remain an epistemologist realist.
William James
Image
Knowledge about life is one thing effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.
William James
Image
Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies … and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to keep by force of mere inertia.
William James
Image
Emotional occasions, especially violent ones, are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements. The sudden and explosive ways in which love, jealousy, guilt, fear, remorse, or anger can seize upon one are known to everybody. . . . And emotions that come in this explosive way seldom leave things as they found them.
William James
Image
The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.
William James