Quote

The total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but mutually ignore each other.

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
Consciousness
Possible
Mutually
May
Split
Splits
Ignore
Total
Parts
Exist

More quotes by William James

Image
If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill.
William James
Image
You do not sing because you're happy, you're happy because you sing.
William James
Image
All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.
William James
Image
Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. We are making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses power of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.
William James
Image
The sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can.
William James
Image
Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.
William James
Image
Psychology saves us from mistakes. It makes us more clear as to what we are about. We gain confidence in respect to any method which we are using as soon as we believe that it has theory as well as practice at its back.
William James
Image
The university most worthy of rational admiration is that one in which your lonely thinker can feel himself lonely, most positively furthered, and most richly fed
William James
Image
The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.
William James
Image
Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make very small use of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger.
William James
Image
Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
William James
Image
Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.
William James
Image
The suspicion is in the air nowadays that the superiority of one of our formulas to another may not consist so much in its literal 'objectivity,' as in subjective qualities like its usefulness, its 'elegance,' or its congruity with our residual beliefs
William James
Image
Impulse without reason is enough, and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift.
William James
Image
How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well?
William James
Image
To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.
William James
Image
When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome.
William James
Image
The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains and the 'evolution' of brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms came to be so caught and jammed.
William James
Image
Strength is a facade for the proud, weakness is a mask for the lazy.
William James
Image
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