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The true'to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.
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
Thinking
Expedient
Briefly
Behaving
True
Right
Way
More quotes by William James
All natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it.
William James
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
The stream of thought flows on but most of its segments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory survives the instant of their passage. Of others, it is confined to a few moments, hours or days. Others, again, leave vestiges which are indestructible, and by means of which they may be recalled as long as life endures.
William James
Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the captivity, but those of the days of Solomon 's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come.
William James
Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
William James
Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.
William James
There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other.
William James
The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.
William James
To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.
William James
We divert our attention from disease and death as much as we can the slaughterhouses are huddled out of sight and never mentioned, so that the world we recognize officially in literature and in society is a poetic fiction far handsomer, cleaner and better than the world that really is.
William James
What a magnificent land and race is this Britain! Everything about them is of better quality than the corresponding thing in the U.S.... Yet I believe (or suspect) that ours is eventually the bigger destiny, if we can only succeed in living up to it.
William James
All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.
William James
Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits.
William James
Organization and method mean much, but contagious human characters mean more in a university.
William James
Agisci come se quel che fai, facesse la differenza. La fa!
William James
The greatest discovery of the 20th Century is that our attitude of mind determines our quality of life, not circumstances.
William James
Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality.
William James
Most men have a good memory for facts connected with their own pursuits.
William James
We are mere bundles of habits.
William James
Men's activities are occupied into ways -- in grappling with external circumstances and in striving to set things at one in their own topsy-turvy mind.
William James
