True to her inveterate habit, rationalism reverts to ‘principles,’ and thinks that when an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular solution.
WILLIAM JAMESThe 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.
More William James Quotes
-
-
Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
WILLIAM JAMES -
Organization and method mean much, but contagious human characters mean more in a university.
WILLIAM JAMES -
We are thinking beings, and we cannot exclude the intellect from participating in any of our functions.
WILLIAM JAMES -
The emotions aren’t always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.
WILLIAM JAMES -
The first lecture in psychology that I ever heard was the first I ever gave.
WILLIAM JAMES -
Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality.
WILLIAM JAMES -
So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.
WILLIAM JAMES -
If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.
WILLIAM JAMES -
The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.
WILLIAM JAMES -
Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.
WILLIAM JAMES -
The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
WILLIAM JAMES -
Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess.
WILLIAM JAMES -
Owing to the fact that all experience is a process, no point of view can ever be the last one
WILLIAM JAMES -
Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.
WILLIAM JAMES -
Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
WILLIAM JAMES






