Quote

If WE claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp.

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
Love
Moment
Hope
Probability
Given
Grasp
Moments
Statistics
Truth
Claim
Ever
Reasonable
Much
Claims
Men
Within

More quotes by William James

Image
What a teacher needs to know about psychology might almost be written on the palm of one's hand.
William James
Image
The squalid cash interpretation put on the word success — is our national disease.
William James
Image
If you want a confidence, act as if you already have it. Try the as if technique.
William James
Image
I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.
William James
Image
The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns toward concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power.
William James
Image
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
Image
The love of life, at any and every level of development, is the religious impulse.
William James
Image
If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed.
William James
Image
Tension is a habit. Relaxing is a habit. Bad habits can be broken, good habits formed.
William James
Image
In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.
William James
Image
At bottom, the whole concern of religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe.
William James
Image
No living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody.
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
Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely leave the result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation.
William James
Image
Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
William James
Image
Choose a self and stand by it.
William James
Image
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation.
William James
Image
With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.
William James
Image
If any one phrase could gather its (religion's) universal message, that phrase would be, - All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may suggest.
William James
Image
Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists.
William James