Quote

Psychology saves us from mistakes. It makes us more clear as to what we are about. We gain confidence in respect to any method which we are using as soon as we believe that it has theory as well as practice at its back.

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
Wells
Theory
Gain
Well
Respect
Gains
Believe
Mistake
Mistakes
Practice
Using
Clear
Method
Makes
Confidence
Art
Soon
Saves
Back
Teaching
Psychology

More quotes by William James

Image
The unrest which keeps the never stopping clock of metaphysics going is the thought that the nonexistence of this world is just as possible as its existence.
William James
Image
An educated memory depends on an organized system of associations and its goodness depends on two of their peculiarities: first, on the persistency of the associations and, second, on their number.
William James
Image
Habit is the great flywheel of society.
William James
Image
Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.
William James
Image
If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.
William James
Image
The subjectivist in morals, when his moral feelings are at war with the facts about him, is always free to seek harmony by toningdown the sensitiveness of the feelings.
William James
Image
Cramming seeks to stamp things in by intense application immediately before the ordeal. But a thing thus learned can form but few associations.
William James
Image
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.
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
Image
It is very important that teachers should realize the importance of habit.
William James
Image
We must not just patch and tinker with life. We must keep renewing it. Embrace novelty and uniqueness.
William James
Image
There are 3 rules to follow if you want to change (1) Start immediately, (2) Do it flamboyantly, (3) No exceptions.
William James
Image
When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in.
William James
Image
How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young-or slender.
William James
Image
Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life.
William James
Image
I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.
William James
Image
Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies … and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to keep by force of mere inertia.
William James
Image
True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead to consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse.
William James
Image
Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue.
William James
Image
Everyone knows that on any given day there are energies slumbering in him which the incitement's of that day do not call forth. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. The human individual usually lives far within his limits.
William James