Quote

A great idea goes through three stages on its way to acceptance: 1) it is dismissed as nonsense, 2) it is acknowledged as true, but insignificant, 3) finally, it is seen to be important, but not really anything new.

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
True
Nonsense
Anything
Acceptance
Ideas
Finally
Important
Goes
Great
Stage
Dismissed
Really
Seen
Acknowledged
Way
Idea
Stages
Three
Insignificant

More quotes by William James

Image
Since you make evil or good by your own thoughts, it is your ruling of your thoughts which proves to be your principal concern.
William James
Image
When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.
William James
Image
Lets take full advantage of this discovery
William James
Image
A good hypothesis in science must have other properties than those of the phenomenon it is immediately invoked to explain, otherwise it is not prolific enough.
William James
Image
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
Image
In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible.
William James
Image
The teachers of this country, one may say, have its future in their hands.
William James
Image
Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again.
William James
Image
Hogamus, higamous Man is polygamous Higamus, hogamous Woman monogamous.
William James
Image
A little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians.
William James
Image
I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave.
William James
Image
Lay plans as if we were to be immortal.
William James
Image
My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing, and I can only do one thing at a time.
William James
Image
The difference between the first and second-best things in art absolutely seems to escape verbal definition -- it is a matter of a hair, a shade, an inward quiver of some kind -- yet what miles away in the point of preciousness!
William James
Image
I am tired of the position of the dried-up critic and doubter. The believer is the true full man. (from a biography of James by Robert D. Richardson)
William James
Image
The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds.
William James
Image
There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.
William James
Image
Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.
William James
Image
Individuality is founded in feeling
William James
Image
Religious awe is the same organic thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain gorge.
William James