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Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays

Book by William James · 18 quotes · Ifs, Impulse, Men

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AllIfsImpulseMenScienceMayPhilosophicalWayWholeAccountsBelieveCommunityDiesEnvironmentFactorsFatalismFormFree WillHeartIndestructibleIndividual

Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays Quotes

“Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities his preeminence over them simply and solely in the number and in the fantastic and unnecessary character of his wants, physical, moral, aesthetic, and intellectual. Had his whole life not been a quest for the superfluous, he would never have established himself as inexpugnably as he has done in the necessary.”

MenWantDoneWholeCharacterLyingDifferencesNumbersMoralIntellectualWhole LifeChiefsFantasticExcessAestheticQuestsUnnecessarySubjectiveBrutesSuperfluousPropensity
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“Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs; and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way.”

IfsMenWayMayWholeFormPassionOpinionTasteLuckyPhilosophicalAffairPhilosopherIntellectPracticalsConquestPetty
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“Social evolution is a resultant of the interaction of two wholly distinct factors: the individual ... bearing all the power of initiative and origination in his hands; and, second, the social environment with its power of adopting or rejecting both him and his gifts. Both factors are essential to change. The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.”

TwoHandsDiesIndividualSocialCommunityEnvironmentEvolutionEssentialsFactorsImpulseInteractionInitiativeRejectingAdoptingSocial Environment
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“All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.”

PastScienceCausesEnvironmentEffectsTaughtHigherLessonsIdealsFactorsRevolutionaryTaught UsGuisePast ExperiencesProbable Cause
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“Fatalism, whose solving word in all crises of behavior is All striving is vain, will never reign supreme, for the impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race. Moral creeds which speak to that impulse will be widely successful in spite of inconsistency, vagueness, and shadowy determination of expectancy. Man needs a rule for his will, and will invent one if one be not given him.”

IfsMenLifeNeedsSpeakGivenRaceMoralSuccessfulBehaviorDeterminationCrisisStriveSupremeVainImpulseSpiteFree WillCreedsReignInconsistencyIndestructibleExpectancyFatalismVagueness
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“A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms; but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description.”

WayMaySaidDifferentScienceTermCatHorseDescriptionStringsApplicationTailsViolinQuartetsSimultaneousBowelsScrapingString Quartets
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