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We do not sing because we are happy, we are happy because we sing.
William James
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William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Sing
Happiness
Happy
Inspirational
More quotes by William James
Act in earnest and you will become earnest in all you do.
William James
It is so human a book that I don't see how belief in its divine authority can survive the reading of it.
William James
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
Do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty.
William James
Science must constantly be reminded that her purposes are not the only purposes and that the order of uniform causation which she has use for, and is therefore right in postulating, may be enveloped in a wider order, on which she has no claim at all.
William James
Intellectualism' is the belief that our mind comes upon a world complete in itself, and has the duty of ascertaining its contents but has no power of re-determining its character, for that is already given.
William James
Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.
William James
Millions of items in the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind --without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos.
William James
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
[Religion is] the attempt to be in harmony with an unseen order of things.
William James
Most men's friendships are too inarticulate.
William James
Man lives for science as well as bread.
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
When a thing is new, people say: ‘It is not true.’ Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: ‘It is not important.’ Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say: ‘Anyway, it is not new.
William James
The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires.
William James
But when all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence and can make their exercises interesting, whilst others simply cannot. And psychology and general pedagogy here confess their failure, and hand things over to the deeper spring of human personality to conduct the task.
William James
Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein.
William James
To know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teacher.
William James
I have often thought the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it comes upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: This is the real me!.
William James
Life shall be built in doing and suffering and creating.
William James
