Quotessence
Home / Authors / William James
William James

William James Quotes

Philosopher

Filter quotes by topic

AllMenIfsMayPhilosophyFactsMindHumansTruthBeliefWayPhilosophicalScienceWorldLifeThinkingEducationalHabitPsychologyLiteratureIdeas

Famous William James Quotes

“If this life is not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight.”

IfsLifeFeelsMayRealSuccessLife IsFightingUniverseGamesThis LifeTheatrical
Book:The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, and Human Immortality
Create image

“What do believers in the Absolute mean by saving that their belief affords them comfort? They mean that since in the Absolute finite evil is ‘overruled’ already, we may, therefore, whenever we wish, treat the temporal as if it were potentially the eternal, be sure that we can trust its outcome, and, without sin, dismiss our fear and drop the worry of our finite responsibility. In short, they mean that we have a right ever and anon to take a moral holiday, to let the world wag in its own way, feeling that its issues are in better hands than ours and are none of our business.”

IfsWorldWayMayMeanFeelingsHandsEvilBeliefWishSinResponsibilityMoralWorryIssuesComfortEternalTreatsAbsolutesBelieverSavingOutcomesHolidayFiniteWagsAnon
Author:William James
Create image

“The sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can. So to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end, and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear.”

IfsFeelsEndsUseLostSpeakFearPathBraveSpontaneousCheerfulCheerfulness
Author:William James
Create image

“Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a line as they. But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite sides like the magnet and the filings with the card. Romeo soon finds a circuitous way, by scaling the wall or otherwise, of touching Juliet's lips directly. With the filings the path is fixed; whether it reaches the end depends on accidents. With the lover it is the end which is fixed, the path may be modified indefinitely.”

IfsWayWantLifeMayEndsFacesMovingSidesLinesPathWallDependsLoversBuiltOppositesLipsObstaclesAccidentsCardsFixedTouchingMagnetJulietFiling
Book:The Principles of Psychology
Create image

“We ought, all of us, to realize each other in this intense, pathetic, and important way. If you say that this is absurd, and that we cannot be in love with everyone at once, I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people's lives; and that such persons know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big.”

PeopleIfsKnowsLifeHeartPersonsMatterFactsBigsCertainOrdinaryCapacityIdealsAffectionVicesDelightEnormousAbsurdIntensityMatter Of FactExclusion
Author:William James
Create image

“Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived from twitching of frogs' legs (especially if the frogs are decapitated) and that, on the other hand, any doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of human beings (with heads on their shoulders) must be benighted and superstitious.”

IfsThinkingHumansPersonsFeelingsHandsSeemsScienceHuman BeingsArgumentLegsFavorsShouldersDoctrineConclusionFrogsSuperstitiousTwitching
Author:William James
Create image

“Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's Utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torment, what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?”

IfsWorldFeelsShouldSoulWould BeScienceCertainLostSimpleEmotionMillionsConditionsLonelyIndependentFruitEdgesAcceptedImpulseEnjoymentTormentHypothesisUtopiaBargainsHideousClutchLost SoulsMorrisFourier
Book:The Will to Believe and Human Immortality
Create image

“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
Book:Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays
Create image

“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.”

IfsWayMindKindIdeasPhilosophyWholeFormCertainLiteratureWishInterestInterestingNovelObjectsEducationalOne WayPupilsSystematicIf Then
Book:Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals
Create image

“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
Create image

“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.”

IfsThinkingShouldMindArtPhilosophyRememberLiteratureWishEffortConsciousConnectionsEducationalConnectedNew ThingsRecallsImpressConnectingPupils
Book:Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals
Create image

“It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call something there, more deep and more general than any of the special and particular senses by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed.”

IfsHumansMayFeelingsRealityConsciousnessPsychologySpecialParticularPerceptionCurrentsSensesObjectivesHuman Consciousness
Book:The Varieties of Religious Experience
Create image

“If I should throw down a thousand beans at random upon a table, I could doubtless, by eliminating a sufficient number of them, leave the rest in almost any geometrical pattern you might propose to me, and you might then say that that pattern was the thing prefigured beforehand, and that the other beans were mere irrelevance and packing material. Our dealings with Nature are just like this.”

IfsShouldMightNumbersMaterialsThousandTablesMerePatternsSufficientStatisticsProposeBeansEliminatingDealingsPackingIrrelevance
Book:The Varieties of Religious Experience
Create image

“Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely leave the result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation.”

IfsInspirationalMayHoursLinesPerfectResultsEducationMorningGenerationsYouthFineAnxietyWake UpBusyCertaintyWakingCompetent
Book:The Principles of Psychology
Create image

“Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism. In heroism, we feel, life's supreme mystery is hidden. We tolerate no one who has no capacity whatever for it in any direction. On the other hand, no matter what a man's frailties otherwise may be, if he be willing to risk death, and still more if he suffer it heroically, in the service he has chosen, the fact consecrates him forever.”

IfsMenWorldFeelsMayStillsMatterFactsHandsRealitySufferingCommonForeverRiskMysteryMankindWillingCapacityNo Matter WhatInstinctTheatreSupremeChosenHeroismTolerateFrailty
Book:The Varieties of Religious Experience
Create image

“You can be an artist without visual images, a reader without eyes, a mass of erudition with a bad elementary memory. In almost any subject your passion for the subject will save you. If you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly attain it. If you wish to be rich, you will be rich; if you wish to be learned, you will be learned; if you wish to be good, you will be good. Only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them with exclusiveness, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.”

IfsEnoughEyeCareArtistPassionWishMemoriesResultsRichSubjectsReaderMassHundredBe GoodVisualsEruditionVisual Images
Book:Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals
Create image

“The first thing the intellect does with an object is to class it along with something else. But any object that is infinitely important to us and awakens our devotion feels to us also as if it must be sui generis and unique. Probably a crab would be filled with a sense of personal outrage if it could hear us class it without ado or apology as a crustacean, and thus dispose of it. 'I am no such thing,' it would say; 'I am MYSELF, MYSELF alone.”

IfsFeelsFirstsDoeImportantWould BeScienceClassObjectsUniqueFilledIntellectDevotionApologyOutrageClassificationCrabs
Book:The Varieties of Religious Experience
Create image