Quotessence
Home / Authors / William James
William James

William James Quotes

Philosopher

Filter quotes by topic

AllMenIfsMayPhilosophyFactsMindHumansTruthBeliefWayPhilosophicalScienceWorldLifeThinkingEducationalHabitPsychologyLiteratureIdeas

Famous William James Quotes

“Essential truth, the truth of the intellectualists, the truth with no one thinking it, is like the coat that fits tho no one has ever tried it on, like the music that no ear has listened to. It is less real, not more real, than the verified article; and to attribute a superior degree of glory to it seems little more than a piece of perverse abstraction-worship.”

ThinkingLittlesRealSeemsTruthPiecesFitEssentialsDegreesWorshipGloryEarsSuperiorsAttributesArticlesCoatsAbstractionIntellectualism
Book:The Meaning of Truth: Human Understanding
Create image

“If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take us as long to recall a space of time as it took the original time to elapse, and we should never get ahead with our thinking. All recollected times undergo, accordingly, what M. Ribot calls foreshortening; and this foreshortening is due to the omission of an enormous number of facts which filled them.”

IfsThinkingShouldLongFactsSpaceNumbersOriginalsFilledIllDuesEnormousOccasionsRememberedRecallsForgetfulnessGet AheadOmission
Author:William James
Create image

“Compared with men, it is probable that brutes neither attend to abstract characters, nor have associations by similarity. Their thoughts probably pass from one concrete object to its habitual concrete successor far more uniformly than is the case with us. In other words, their associations of ideas are almost exclusively by contiguity. So far, however, as any brute might think by abstract characters instead of by association of con cretes, he would have to be admitted to be a reasoner in the true human sense. How far this may take place is quite uncertain.”

ThinkingMenHumansMayIdeasCharacterMightCasesObjectsAbstractAssociationConcreteHumankindUncertainBrutesSimilarityHabitualSuccessorsCrete
Author:William James
Create image

“... if we take the universe of 'fitting,' countless coats 'fit' backs, and countless boots 'fit' feet, on which they are not practically fitted; countless stones 'fit' gaps in walls into which no one seeks to fit them actually. In the same way countless opinions 'fit' realities, and countless truths are valid, tho no thinker ever thinks them.”

IfsThinkingWayRealityTruthUniverseOpinionFeetWallFitStonesGapsThinkerBootsCoatsFitting
Book:The Meaning of Truth: Human Understanding
Create image

“You make a great, very great mistake, if you think that psychology, being the science of the mind's laws, is something from which you can deduce definite programmes and schemes and methods of instruction for immediate schoolroom use.”

IfsThinkingMindArtUseLawMistakePsychologyTeachingMethodInstructionSchemesDefiniteProgrammesGreat MistakesTeaching Art
Book:Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals
Create image

“Don't preach too much to your pupils or abound in good talk in the abstract. Lie in wait rather for the practical opportunities, be prompt to seize those as they pass, and thus at one operation get your pupils both to think, to feel, and to do.”

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

“The mind of your own enemy, the pupil, is working away from you, as keenly and eagerly as is the mind of the commander on the other side from the scientific general. Just what the respective enemies want and think, and what they know or do not know, are as hard things for the teachers as for the general to find out.”

ThinkingKnowsWantMindHardSidesEnemyTeacherCommandersPupilsAway From YouHard Things
Book:Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals
Create image

“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”

ThinkingHappinessChoicesFearAbilityAnxietyWeaponsStressPhilosophicalCaringTensionReliefAnxiousRelaxationRelaxedStressedCopingStressfulStress ReliefStress ManagementGreatest LoveCalmingStress FreeStressorsAnxiety And FearStress And AnxietyWork StressReduce StressUnder StressLife StressPragmatistsAbility To ChooseStress RelievingStress And LifeStressful LifeRelaxation And StressNo StressInspirational StressStress RelieverStress LevelsDealing With StressStress ReleaseStressful DayLess Stress
Author:William James
Create image

“Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.”

ThinkingMenAttitudePositivePositive ThinkingPhilosophicalInspirational AttitudePositive AttitudeAlteredMy GenerationMy AttitudeThis GenerationThink PositiveMental AttitudeAptitudePositive Thinking And AttitudeBest AttitudeKeep A Positive AttitudePositive Thinking AttitudeBad AttitudeNegative AttitudeLife AttitudeGood AttitudePositive Mental AttitudeAttitude And LifeGreat Positive AttitudeChange Your AttitudeShort Positive AttitudeThink Positive Be PositivePositive Attitude In LifeLife AlteringInspirational Positive AttitudePositive Attitude Towards LifePositive Thinking In LifeChanging AttitudeAbility To ChooseCool AttitudeStaying Positive In LifePositive Attitude ImagesGreatest Generation
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

“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

“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”

ThinkingMenChildrenStatesHouseOpinionClassMaterialsLaborAccountsScaredArtisticProtestMaterialismHardshipDoomedUglinessManualsBank AccountsThinking ManManual LaborQuake
Book:The Varieties of Religious Experience
Create image