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The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as the sculptor works on his block of stone.
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
Mind
Receives
Stone
Block
Data
Stones
Short
Works
Sculptor
Much
Sculptors
More quotes by William James
Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
William James
I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.
William James
Conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity.
William James
Psychology ought certainly to give the teacher radical help.
William James
Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.
William James
Ideas are so much flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives them cognitive lustre. This is why as a pragmatistI have so carefully posited 'reality' ab initio, and why throughout my whole discussion, I remain an epistemologist realist.
William James
The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires.
William James
A remarkable parallel, which I think has never been noticed, obtains between the facts of social evolution on the one hand, and of zological evolution as expounded by Mr. Darwin on the other.
William James
Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention . . . But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them.
William James
The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact.
William James
The true'to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.
William James
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
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
The difference between an interesting and a tedious teacher consists in little more than the inventiveness by which the one is able to mediate these associations and connections, and in the dullness in discovering such transitions which the other shows.
William James
There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.
William James
Let anyone try, I will not say to arrest, but to notice or to attend to, the present moment of time. One of the most baffling experiences occurs. 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
[T]here is very little difference between one person and another, but what little difference ther eis, is very important.
William James
We must not just patch and tinker with life. We must keep renewing it. Embrace novelty and uniqueness.
William James
The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.
William James
To consider hypotheses is surely always better than to dogmatize ins blaue hinein
William James
