William James Quotes

433 Sourced Quotes

As in the night all cats are gray, so in the darkness of metaphysical criticism all causes are obscure.

William James
If theological ideas prove to have a value for concrete life, they will be true, for pragmatism, in the sense of being good for so much. How much more they are true, will depend entirely on their relations to the other truths that also have to be acknowledged.

William James
The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics never made a man behave rightly. The most such sciences can do is to help us to catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to behave wrongly; and to criticise ourselves more articulately after we have made mistakes.

William James
The bottom of being is left logically opaque to us, a datum in the strict sense of the word, something we simply come upon and find, and about which (if we wish to act) we should pause and wonder as little as possible. In this confession lies the lasting truth of empiricism.

William James
But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them theyare sure to combine.

William James
In this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a view of things is 'noble,' that ought to count as presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic disqualification. The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman.

William James
A remarkable parallel, which I think has never been noticed, obtains between the facts of social evolution on the one hand, and of zological evolution as expounded by Mr. Darwin on the other.

William James
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.

William James
Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be they principles, under penalty of endless inconsistency and frustration.

William James
When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness.

William James
On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.

William James
Evil is a disease; and worry over disease is itself an additional form of disease, which only adds to the original complaint.

William James
So far war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until an equivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war must have its way.

William James
Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification processes

William James
The instant field of the present is at all times what I call the 'pure' experience. It is only virtually or potentially either object or subject as yet.

William James
The love of life, at any and every level of development, is the religious impulse.

William James
General scepticism is the live mental attitude of refusing to conclude. It is a permanent torpor of the will, renewing itself in detail towards each successive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic than you can kill off obstinacy or practical joking.

William James
Religious awe is the same organic thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain gorge.

William James
The teacher's prime concern should be to ingrain into the pupil that assortment of habits that shall be most useful to him throughout life. Education is for behavior, and habits are the stuff of which behavior consists.

William James
No one sees further into a generalization than his own knowledge of detail extends.

William James
I am the same personal being who in old times upon the Earth had those experiences.

William James
In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible.

William James
It is only in the lonely emergencies of life that our creed is tested: then routine maxims fail, and we fall back on our gods.

William James
Science... must be constantly reminded that her purposes are not the only purposes, and that the order of uniform causation which she has use for, and is therefore right in postulating, may be enveloped in a wider order, on which she has no claims at all.

William James
An experience, perceptual or conceptual, must conform to reality in order to be true

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

William James
The subjectivist in morals, when his moral feelings are at war with the facts about him, is always free to seek harmony by toningdown the sensitiveness of the feelings.

William James
From a pragmatic point of view, the difference between living against a background of foreigness (an indifferent Universe) and one of intimacy (a benevolent Universe) means the difference between a general habit of wariness and one of trust.

William James
One hears of the mechanical equivalent of heat. What we now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war: something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be incompatible.

William James
The unrest which keeps the never stopping clock of metaphysics going is the thought that the nonexistence of this world is just as possible as its existence.

William James