Quote

A difference which makes no difference is no difference at all.

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
Difference
Differences
Makes

More quotes by William James

Image
Man lives for science as well as bread.
William James
Image
The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.
William James
Image
Let anyone try, I will not say to arrest, but to notice or to attend to, the present moment of time. One of the most baffling experiences occurs. Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.
William James
Image
We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can. . . . The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.
William James
Image
Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.
William James
Image
What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise.
William James
Image
Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again.
William James
Image
Between what a man calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw. We feel and act about certain things that are ours very much as we feel and act about ourselves.
William James
Image
Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind!
William James
Image
In all primary school work the principle of multiple impressions is well recognized.
William James
Image
Most unhappiness is caused because people listen to themselves... instead of talking to themselves.
William James
Image
The exercise of voluntary attention in the schoolroom must therefore be counted one of the most important points of training that take place there and the first-rate teacher, by the keenness of the remoter interests which he is able to awaken, will provide abundant opportunities for its occurrence.
William James
Image
The truth remains that, after adolescence has begun, words, words, words, must constitute a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what the human being has to learn.
William James
Image
The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example to work on others as it may.
William James
Image
Our beliefs are really rules for action.
William James
Image
It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
William James
Image
Faith is one of the forces by which men live, and the total absence of it means collapse
William James
Image
The amount of psychology which is necessary to all teachers need not be very great.
William James
Image
The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.
William James
Image
If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill.
William James