Home / Quotes / Quote by William James

Quote by William James

“As long as there are postmen, life will have zest.”

Quote by William James

Author

William James, born on January 11, 1842, and died on August 26, 1910, was an influential American philosopher, psychologist, and writer. He is considered one of the founders of functionalism in psychology and has had a profound impact on the fields of psychology, philosophy, and religion. more

You May Also Like

“The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stoodthere from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.”

Thinking Mind Different Thousand Stones Eternity Block Data Thoughtful Statues Sculptors

Book:The Principles of Psychology

Source: The Principles of Psychology

“I will entertain anything; it doesn't matter. You know, it's not obviously about the price, it's not about who, it's kind of about when and what. It's material, that's all.”

Knows Kind Matter Materials Host

Author:Tom Hanks

“Faith is synonymous with working hypothesis.”

Faith Hypothesis

Book:The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, and Human Immortality

Source: The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, and Human Immortality

“Better risk loss of truth than chance of error--that is your faith-vetoer's exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field.”

Faith Religious Chance Loss Risk Fields Position Errors Believer Stakes Hypothesis

Book:James and Dewey on Belief and Experience

Source: James and Dewey on Belief and Experience

“Far from being antecedent principles that animate the process, law, language, truth are but abstract names for its results.”

Truth Law Names Language Process Results Principles Abstract

Book:Pragmatism

Source: Pragmatism

“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.”

Thinking Littles Real Seems Truth Pieces Fit Essentials Degrees Worship Glory Ears Superiors Attributes Articles Coats Abstraction Intellectualism

Book:The Meaning of Truth: Human Understanding

Source: The Meaning of Truth: Human Understanding

“The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns; all superior minds feel seriously about them, and the mind with the shortest views is simply the mind of the more shallow man.”

Men Feels Mind Lasts Views Concern Absolutes Philosophical Superiors Shallow Philosophic Overlapping

Book:William James: Essays and Lectures

Source: William James: Essays and Lectures

“Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it opens outthe widest vistas. It 'bakes no bread', as has been said, but it can inspire our souls with courage.”

Humans Has Beens Said Soul Philosophy Inspire Philosophical Pursuit Bread Sublime Vistas

Book:Pragmatism and the Conception of Thruth

Source: Pragmatism and the Conception of Thruth

“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.”

Ifs Thinking Should Long Facts Space Numbers Originals Filled Ill Dues Enormous Occasions Remembered Recalls Forgetfulness Get Ahead Omission

Author:William James

“That reality is 'independent' means that there is something in every experience that escapes our arbitrary control. If it be a sensible experience it coerces our attention; if a sequence, we cannot invert it; if we compare two terms we can come to only one result. There is a push, an urgency, within our very experience, against which we are on the whole powerless, and which drives us in a direction that is the destiny of our belief.”

Source: The Meaning of Truth: Human Understanding