Quote

There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood bu those who hear it.

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
Magnanimity
Persuasion
Misunderstood
Statistics
Worse
Hear
Lying
Truth
Crocodiles

More quotes by William James

Image
All natural goods perish. Riches take wings fame is a breath love is a cheat youth and health and pleasure vanish.
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
The unrest which keeps the never stopping clock of metaphysics going is the thought that the nonexistence of this world is just as possible as its existence.
William James
Image
The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stoodthere from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.
William James
Image
True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead to consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse.
William James
Image
The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as the sculptor works on his block of stone.
William James
Image
We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in sight of our fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind.
William James
Image
The thinker philosophizes as the lover loves. Even were the consequences not only useless but harmful, he must obey his impulse.
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
Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.
William James
Image
I will act as if I do make a difference.
William James
Image
The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly.
William James
Image
Real servants don't try to use God for their purposes. They let God use them for His purposes.
William James
Image
The total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but mutually ignore each other.
William James
Image
Our view of the world is truly shaped by what we decide to hear.
William James
Image
The instant field of the present is at all times what I call the 'pure' experience. It is only virtually or potentially either object or subject as yet.
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
The man whose acquisitions stick is the man who is always achieving and advancing whilst his neighbors, spending most of their time in relearning what they once knew but have forgotten, simply hold their own.
William James
Image
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions.
William James
Image
Belief is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements for the solace and private pleasure of the believer . . . It is wrong always, everywhere, and for every one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
William James