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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
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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
Facts
Ethical
Feels
Possibly
Habitat
Mind
Relation
Composed
World
Merely
Swing
Neither
Propositions
Physical
Swings
Law
Apply
Moral
Relations
More quotes by William James
There can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and said his say.
William James
Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.
William James
...as I apprehend the Buddhist doctrine of karma, I agree in principle with that.
William James
It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk.
William James
Theory must mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences
William James
The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
William James
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
From the Vedas we learn a practical art of surgery, medicine, music, house building under which mechanized art is included. They are encyclopedia of every aspect of life, culture, religion, science, ethics, law, cosmology and meteorology.
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
If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.
William James
We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort.
William James
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
All natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it.
William James
Focus on increasing service. Becoming great where you are. Pile in the wood. The heat will follow.
William James
Our theories are wedged and controlled as nothing else is. Yet sometimes alternative theoretic formulas are equally compatible with all the truths we know, and then we choose between them for subjective reasons. We choose the kind of theory to which we are already partial: we follow 'elegenace' or 'economy'
William James
Formula to live your dream: 1. Be bold. 2. Begin now, 3. No exceptions.
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
Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results.
William James
The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds.
William James
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
