Quote

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

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
Facts
Penalties
Reality
Realities
Ideas
Concrete
Must
Frustration
Abstract
Endless
Agree
Inconsistency
Principles
Penalty

More quotes by William James

Image
The difference between an interesting and a tedious teacher consists in little more than the inventiveness by which the one is able to mediate these associations and connections, and in the dullness in discovering such transitions which the other shows.
William James
Image
Results should not be too voluntarily aimed at or too busily thought of. They are sure to float up of their own accord from a long enough daily work at a given matter.
William James
Image
If you can change your mind, you can change your life.
William James
Image
Thoughts become perception, perception becomes reality. Alter your thoughts, alter your reality.
William James
Image
We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. ...Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.
William James
Image
'What would be better for us to believe!' This sounds very like a definition of truth
William James
Image
If you want to change your life, do it flamboyantly and start immediately.
William James
Image
The love of life, at any and every level of development, is the religious impulse.
William James
Image
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
William James
Image
Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue.
William James
Image
Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life's evils, is set free in those who have religious faith.
William James
Image
What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!
William James
Image
The work that leads to a doctor's degree is a constant temptation to sacrifice one's growth as a man to one's growth as a specialist.
William James
Image
In this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a view of things is 'noble,' that ought to count as presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic disqualification. The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman.
William James
Image
The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist.
William James
Image
In business for yourself, not by yourself.
William James
Image
Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification processes
William James
Image
The belief in free-will is not in the least incompatible with the belief in Providence, provided you do not restrict the Providence to fulminating nothing but fatal decrees.
William James
Image
All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.
William James
Image
If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill. But more important than that, practicing this philosophy has made a different person of me.
William James