William James Quotes

When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome. - William James

When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in. - William James

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

What we 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 compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be incompatible. - William James

What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition! - William James

We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with us, ready at any moment to burst into flame, the smoldering and sinister traits of character by means of which they lived through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves unharmed. - William James

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be. - William James

We need only in cold blood to act as if the thing in question were real and it will infallibly end by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. - William James

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