William James Quotes

433 Sourced Quotes

Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them; and no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical propositions apply.

William James
Science herself consults her heart when she lays it down that the infinite ascertainment of fact and correction of false belief are the supreme goods for man.

William James
Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience; they will lead him nowhere or else make false connections

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

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

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

William James
To consider hypotheses is surely always better than to dogmatize ins blaue hinein

William James
Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrill and excitements.... From time immemorial war has been... the supremely thrilling excitement.

William James
The true'to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.

William James
The thinker philosophizes as the lover loves. Even were the consequences not only useless but harmful, he must obey his impulse.

William James
Asceticism may be a mere expression of organic hardihood, disgusted with too much ease.

William James
We are stereotyped creatures, imitators and copiers of our past selves.

William James
The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of the world.

William James
The belief in free-will is not in the least incompatible with the belief in Providence, provided you do not restrict the Providence to fulminating nothing but fatal decrees.

William James
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.

William James
Geology, economics, mechanics are humanities when taught with reference to the successive achievements of the geniuses to which these sciences owe their being. Not taught thus, literature remains grammar, art a catalogue, history a list of dates, and natural science a sheet of formulas and weights and measures.

William James
Emotional occasions, especially violent ones, are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements. The sudden and explosive ways in which love, jealousy, guilt, fear, remorse, or anger can seize upon one are known to everybody.... And emotions that come in this explosive way seldom leave things as they found them.

William James
The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.

William James
Fondness for the word 'scientist' is one of the notes by which you may know its votaries; and its [science's] short way of killing any opinion that it disbelieves in is to call it 'unscientific.'

William James
Owing to the fact that all experience is a process, no point of view can ever be the last one

William James
The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves, have been flown for religious ideals.

William James
No bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp.

William James
Mental fire is what won't burn real sticks; mental water is what won't necessarily (though of course it may) put out even a mentalfire.

William James