William James quotes - page 6

Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics. (William James)
Men are now proud of belonging to a conquering nation, and without a murmur they lay down their persons and their wealth, if by so doing they may fend off subjection. View quote
William James
Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors. View quote
William James
Both thought and feeling are determinants of conduct, and the same conduct may be determined either by feeling or by thought. View quote
William James
If you can change your mind, you can change your life. View quote
William James
Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours. View quote
William James
Our view of the world is truly shaped by what we decide to hear. View quote
William James
There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference. View quote
William James
Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile. View quote
William James
Beyond the very extremity of fatigue distress, amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own, sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we never push through the obstruction. View quote
William James
My experience is what I agree to attend to. (William James)
We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all. View quote
William James
Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law. View quote
William James
I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly. View quote
William James
Philosophy is "an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly. View quote
William James
Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism. View quote
William James
There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other. View quote
William James
It would probably astound each of us beyond measure to be let into his neighbors mind and to find how different the scenery was there from that of his own. View quote
William James
A sense of humor is just common sense dancing. View quote
William James
A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates. View quote
William James
The strenuous life tastes better. (William James)
Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit. View quote
William James
No particular results then, so far, but only an attitude of orientation, is what the pragmatic method means. The attitude of looking away from first things, principles, 'categories,' supposed necessities; and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts. View quote
William James
The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion; and to the very end of life, our location of all things in one space is due to the fact that the original extents or bignesses of all the sensations which came to our notice at once, coalesced together into one and the same space. View quote
William James
If belief consists in an emotional reaction of the entire man on an object, how can we believe at will? We cannot control our emotions.... But gradually our will can lead us to the same results by a very simple method: we need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and keep acting as if it were real, and it will infallibly end by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. It will become so knit with habit and emotion that our interests in it will be those which characterize belief. View quote
William James