William James Short Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

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A thing is important if anyone think it important.

William James
A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.

William James
Everything which is demanded is by that fact a good.

William James
The trail of the human serpent is thus over everything.

William James
The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature.

William James
Footnotes, the little dogs yapping at the heels of the text.

William James
Wherever you are it is your own friends who make your world.

William James
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

William James
We do not weep because we are sad, we are sad because we weep.

William James
Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life.

William James
A difference which makes no difference is no difference at all.

William James
The aim of science is always to reduce complexity to simplicity.

William James
'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.

William James
A paradise of inward tranquility seems to be faith's usual result.

William James
My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing.

William James
The impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race.

William James
No living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody.

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

William James
We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

William James
All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.

William James
The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly.

William James
There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.

William James
To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.

William James
It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk.

William James
All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.

William James
We believe as much as we can. We would believe everything if we could.

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

William James
How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young-or slender.

William James
The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.

William James
With no attempt there can be no failure; with no failure no humiliation.

William James