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William James

William James Quotes

Philosopher

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Famous William James Quotes

“There is a stream, a succession of states, or waves, or fields (or whatever you please to call them), of knowledge, of feeling, of desire, of deliberation, etc., that constantly pass and repass, and that constitute our inner life.”

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Book:Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals
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“The entire routine of our memorized acquisitions, for example, is a consequence of nothing but the Law of Contiguity. The words of a poem, the formulas of trigonometry, the facts of history, the properties of material things, are all known to us as definite systems or groups of objects which cohere in an order fixed by innumerable iterations, and of which any one part reminds us of the others.”

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Author:William James
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“Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists. The two associated objects grow, as it were, together; the interesting portion sheds its quality over the whole; and thus things not interesting in their own right borrow an interest which becomes as real and as strong as that of any natively interesting thing.”

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Book:Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals
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“The most natively interesting object to a man is his own personal self and its fortunes. We accordingly see that the moment a thing becomes connected with the fortunes of the self, it forthwith becomes an interesting thing.”

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Book:Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals
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“From all these facts there emerges a very simple abstract program for the teacher to follow in keeping the attention of the child: Begin with the line of his native interests, and offer him objects that have some immediate connection with these.”

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Book:Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals
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“If, then, you wish to insure the interest of your pupils, there is only one way to do it; and that is to make certain that they have something in their minds to attend with, when you begin to talk. That something can consist in nothing but a previous lot of ideas already interesting in themselves, and of such a nature that the incoming novel objects which you present can dovetail into them and form with them some kind of a logically associated or systematic whole.”

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Book:Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals
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“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.”

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Book:Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals
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“But when all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence and can make their exercises interesting, whilst others simply cannot. And psychology and general pedagogy here confess their failure, and hand things over to the deeper spring of human personality to conduct the task.”

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Book:Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals
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“If the topic be highly abstract, show its nature by concrete examples. If it be unfamiliar, trace some point of analogy in it with the known. If it be inhuman, make it figure as part of a story. If it be difficult, couple its acquisition with some prospect of personal gain. Above all things, make sure that it shall run through certain inner changes, since no unvarying object can possibly hold the mental field for long.”

IfsLongPhilosophyStoriesShowsRunningCertainLiteratureWishDifficultInterestingSecretSubjectsFiguresExampleFieldsObjectsCoupleGainsAspectAll ThingsUnityEducationalWanderVarietyAbstractConcreteTopicsAcquisitionPupilsUnfamiliarPersonal Gain
Author:William James
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“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.”

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Book:Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals
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“The art of remembering is the art of thinking. When we wish to fix a new thing in either our own mind or a pupil's, our conscious effort should not be so much to impress and retain it as to connect it with something else already there. The connecting is the thinking; and, if we attend clearly to the connection, the connected thing will certainly be likely to remain within recall.”

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Book:Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals
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“Be patient and sympathetic with the type of mind that cuts a poor figure in examinations. It may, in the long examination which life sets us, come out in the end in better shape than the glib and ready reproducer, its passions being deeper, its purposes more worthy, its combining power less commonplace, and its total mental output consequently more important.”

MindMayLongImportantEndsPhilosophyPurposePassionLiteraturePoorCuttingFiguresReadyTypeShapesPatientEducationalDeeperWorthyBe PatientExaminationCommonplaceSympatheticOutputCombining
Book:Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals
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“Feed the growing human being, feed him with the sort of experience for which from year to year he shows a natural craving, and he will develop in adult life a sounder sort of mental tissue, even though he may seem to be 'wasting' a great deal of his growing time, in the eyes of those for whom the only channels of learning are books and verbally communicated information.”

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Book:Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals
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“The gist of the matter is this: Every impression that comes in from without, be it a sentence which we hear, an object of vision, or an effluvium which assails our nose, no sooner enters our consciousness than it is drafted off in some determinate direction or other, making connection with the other materials already there, and finally producing what we call our reaction. The particular connections it strikes into are determined by our past experiences and the 'associations' of the present sort of impression with them.”

MatterPhilosophyPastLiteratureConsciousnessVisionObjectsParticularMaterialsConnectionsEducationalDeterminedSentencesStrikesReactionsImpressionNosesAssociationOur PastPast ExperiencesGist
Book:Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals
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“You perceive now, my friends, what your general or abstract duty is as teachers. Although you have to generate in your pupils a large stock of ideas, any one of which may be inhibitory, yet you must also see to it that no habitual hesitancy or paralysis of the will ensues, and that the pupil still retains his power of vigorous action.”

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Book:Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals
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“The exercise of voluntary attention in the schoolroom must therefore be counted one of the most important points of training that take place there; and the first-rate teacher, by the keenness of the remoter interests which he is able to awaken, will provide abundant opportunities for its occurrence.”

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Book:Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals
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“To begin with, our knowledge grows in spots. The spots may be large or small, but the knowledge ever grows all over... What you first gain from them is probably a small amount of new information, a few new definitions, or distinctions, or points of view. But while these special ideas are being added, the rest of your knowledge stands still, and only gradually will you 'line up' your previous opinions with the novelties I am trying to instil, and modify to some slight degree their mass.”

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Author:William James
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