Quote

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

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
Belief
Upon
Ascertaining
Comes
Intellectualism
Given
Contents
Power
Determining
Character
Complete
Mind
Duty
World
Already

More quotes by William James

Image
When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.
William James
Image
Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.
William James
Image
Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?
William James
Image
We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition
William James
Image
Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. ... From time immemorial war has been ... the supremely thrilling excitement.
William James
Image
We have nothing to do but to receive, resting absolutely upon the merit, power, and love of our Redeemer.
William James
Image
Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract
William James
Image
Organization and method mean much, but contagious human characters mean more in a university.
William James
Image
When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries.
William James
Image
All the daily routine of life, our dressing and undressing, the coming and going from our work or carrying through of its various operations, is utterly without mental reference to pleasure and pain, except under rarely realized conditions.
William James
Image
Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification processes
William James
Image
The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.
William James
Image
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
Image
Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
William James
Image
Act in earnest and you will become earnest in all you do.
William James
Image
What a teacher needs to know about psychology might almost be written on the palm of one's hand.
William James
Image
Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late.
William James
Image
Give your dreams all you've got, and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.
William James
Image
Our life is always deeper than we know, is always more divine than it seems, and hence we are able to survive degradations and despairs which otherwise must engulf us.
William James
Image
'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.
William James