Quote

All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows that the service of the collectivity that owns him needs them. If proud of the collectivity, his own pride rises in proportion. No collectivity is like an army for nourishing such pride.

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
Qualities
Quality
Needs
Acquire
Men
Proportion
Like
Dignity
Collectivity
Service
Nourishing
Army
Owns
Pride
Rises
Proud

More quotes by William James

Image
All of our life is but a mass of small habits - practical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual - that bear us irresistibly toward our destiny.
William James
Image
A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.
William James
Image
Tension is a habit. Relaxing is a habit. Bad habits can be broken, good habits formed.
William James
Image
Procrastination is attitude's natural assassin. There's nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task
William James
Image
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions.
William James
Image
The good or bad is not in the circumstance, but only in the mind...that encounters it.
William James
Image
Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.
William James
Image
The function of ignoring, of inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the function of attention itself.
William James
Image
Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being.
William James
Image
Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.
William James
Image
The war-function has grasped us so far but the constructive interests may some day seem no less imperative, and impose on the individual a hardly lighter burden.
William James
Image
The impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race.
William James
Image
Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.
William James
Image
The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.
William James
Image
It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
William James
Image
If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
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
To be fertile in hypotheses is the first perquisite of creativity and to be willing to throw them away the moment experience contradicts them is the next.
William James
Image
All that we need explicitly to note is that, the more the passive attention is relied on, by keeping the material interesting and the less the kind of attention requiring effort is appealed to the more smoothly and pleasantly the classroom work goes on.
William James
Image
The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own particular ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours.
William James