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William James

55 quotes

William James (1842–1910) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and the first educator to offer a course in psychology in the United States. Often called the "Father of American Psychology," James was a leading thinker in pragmatism and functionalism whose ideas about consciousness, habit, and belief continue to influence philosophy and psychology.

“To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.”

— William James

Best

All Quotes by William James

“The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.”

— William James

Best

“Knowledge about life is one thing effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.”

— William James

Knowledge

“The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.”

— William James

Great

“Individuality is founded in feeling and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.”

— William James

Work

“Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.”

— William James

Truth

“If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.”

— William James

Change

“Man lives for science as well as bread.”

— William James

Science

“The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.”

— William James

Men

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”

— William James

Great

“Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind!”

— William James

Faith

“Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.”

— William James

Faith

“If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door.”

— William James

God

“To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.”

— William James

Best

“'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.”

— William James

Experience

“How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.”

— William James

Happiness

“No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.”

— William James

Good

“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.”

— William James

Nature

“A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.”

— William James

Life

“The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.”

— William James

Great

“Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.”

— William James

Truth