Quote

The old question of whether there is design is idle. The real question is what is the world, whether or not it have a designer--and that can be revealed only by the study of all nature's particulars.

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
Whether
Nature
Particulars
Real
Revealed
World
Idle
Designer
Design
Question
Study

More quotes by William James

Image
The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all the more felt because it was not seen. I could not any more have doubted that HE was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two.
William James
Image
As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate!
William James
Image
Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose.
William James
Image
Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them and no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical propositions apply.
William James
Image
To leap across an abyss, one is better served by faith than doubt.
William James
Image
Psychology is a science, and teaching is an art and sciences never generate arts directly out of themselves.
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
The mind of your own enemy, the pupil, is working away from you, as keenly and eagerly as is the mind of the commander on the other side from the scientific general. Just what the respective enemies want and think, and what they know or do not know, are as hard things for the teachers as for the general to find out.
William James
Image
The greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes.
William James
Image
Once you accept an idea, it's an idea whose time has come.
William James
Image
The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany them.
William James
Image
Belief creates the actual fact.
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
Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling.
William James
Image
We don't laugh because we're happy - we're happy because we laugh.
William James
Image
We all have a lifelong habit of inferiority to our full self...
William James
Image
Habit is a second nature, or rather, it is 'ten times nature'.
William James
Image
At bottom, the whole concern of religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe.
William James
Image
Spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, within the phenomenal world.
William James
Image
As Charles Lamb says, there is nothing so nice as doing good by stealth and being found out by accident, so I now say it is even nicer to make heroic decisions and to be prevented by 'circumstances beyond your control' from ever trying to execute them.
William James