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William James

William James Quotes

Philosopher

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Famous William James Quotes

“Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly. The fundamental conceptions of psychology are practically very clear to us, but theoretically they are very confused, and one easily makes the obscurest assumptions in this science without realizing, until challenged, what internal difficulties they involve.”

PhilosophyTruthSciencePsychologyMetaphysics
Book:The Principles of Psychology: Volume 1
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“Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase of equilibrium in such a structure is marked by what we may call a new set of habits.”

MayMeanEnoughScienceStrongInfluenceHabitWeakStructurePossessionWideYieldStablePhasesStrong EnoughEquilibriumNomenclaturePlasticity
Book:The Principles of Psychology
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“The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.”

LifeInspirationalGivingUseMotivationalScienceLife IsDeathTimeGivenToo MuchPhilosophicalEntrepreneurCharityEntrepreneurshipThis LifeMaking A DifferenceLittle ThingsThings In LifePhilanthropyLife And LoveMarinePhilanthropicGiving InLife Worth LivingLife Is An AdventureLife TimeLife Is GoodSource Of LifeLife AdventureAdventure And LifeGiving To CharityLife Well LivedCharity And GivingInspirational CharityLife And TimeLife Is Worth LivingMarine LifeLife DreamGenerosity And GivingLife Is Not Worth LivingCaring Too MuchPhilanthropy GivingSea LifeHelping Others In NeedLife Is GreatGiving HelpRoad LifePhilanthropy InspirationYou Make A DifferenceLeaving A LegacyFeeling GreatGiven LifeWhat Is The Purpose Of LifePlanning ThingsOutlastingEnergy And LifeLasting LegacyGiving Too MuchSaying Too Much
Author:William James
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“Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.”

WayMeanLittlesScienceImaginationCreativityCreativeGeniusHabitInnovationFacultyBe CreativeBrillianceCreative PeopleCreative ThinkingCreativity And InnovationBusiness InnovationInnovation And BusinessCreative ImaginationScientific TruthImagination And CreativityInspiration And CreativityCreative ThoughtImagination CreativityCreative GeniusInnovation InspirationQuestioning BeliefsArtistic ProcessInspiration And InnovationRelated To CreativityArtistic Genius
Book:Psychology: The Briefer Course
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“Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind!”

BelieveKindTwoUseScienceUniverseBeliefRateIntellectSentencesProfessorsDiscourseLengthy
Book:Pragmatism: The Secret Edition - Open Your Heart to the Real Power and Magic of Living Faith and Let the Heaven Be in You, Go Deep Inside Yourself and Back, Feel the Crazy and Divine Love and Live for Your Dreams
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“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
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“Round about the accredited and orderly facts of every science there ever floats a sort of dust-cloud of exceptional observations, of occurrences minute and irregular and seldom met with, which it always proves more easy to ignore than to attend to... Anyone will renovate his science who will steadily look after the irregular phenomena, and when science is renewed, its new formulas often have more of the voice of the exceptions in them than of what were supposed to be the rules.”

LooksFactsScienceEasyVoiceMinutesMetsProveRoundsCloudsObservationDustSupposed To BeExceptionFormulasExceptionalFloatsOrderly
Author:William James
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“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
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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
Book:Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays
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“Consciousness... does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life. Source of the expression 'stream of consciousness'.”

FirstsDoeScienceBitsConsciousnessTalkingExpressionSourceFlowRiversTrainMetaphorInstanceChainsStreamsSubjectiveHereafterStream Of Consciousness
Author:William James
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“We [may] answer the question: "Why is snow white?" by saying, "For the same reason that soap-suds or whipped eggs are white"-in other words, instead of giving the reason for a fact, we give another example of the same fact. This offering a similar instance, instead of a reason, has often been criticised as one of the forms of logical depravity in men. But manifestly it is not a perverse act of thought, but only an incomplete one. Furnishing parallel cases is the necessary first step towards abstracting the reason imbedded in them all.”

MenGivingFirstsMayReasonFactsFormScienceWhiteAnswersStepsCasesExampleCriticismLogicSnowInstanceAbstractEggsLogicalOfferingFirst StepsParallelsSoapIncompleteDepravitySnow White
Author:William James
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“The first effect of the mind growing cultivated is that processes once multiple get to be performed in a single act. Lazarus has called this the progressive "condensation" of thought. ... Steps really sink from sight. An advanced thinker sees the relations of his topics is such masses and so instantaneously that when he comes to explain to younger minds it is often hard ... Bowditch, who translated and annotated Laplace's Méchanique Céleste, said that whenever his author prefaced a proposition by the words "it is evident," he knew that many hours of hard study lay before him.”

MindFirstsSaidHardScienceProcessHoursStepsStudyGrowingEffectsMassEvidenceSightRelationLaysProgressiveThinkerMultipleEvidentTopicsPropositionsLazarusCondensation
Author:William James
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“When two minds of a high order, interested in kindred subjects, come together, their conversation is chiefly remarkable for the summariness of its allusions and the rapidity of its transitions. Before one of them is half through a sentence the other knows his meaning and replies. ... His mental lungs breathe more deeply, in an atmosphere more broad and vast.”

KnowsMindTwoTogetherScienceOrderHalfSubjectsGeniusConversationSentencesBreatheAtmosphereRemarkableBroadsTransitionLungsKindredAllusionTwo Minds
Author:William James
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“Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein.”

ChildrenScienceWalksPoorHabitFortuneBoundsConservativeEnvyEnormousHardestAgentsWheelsEnviousUprisingDesertedWalks Of LifeOrdinances
Author:William James
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“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
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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
Book:Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays
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