He was an original thinker in and between the disciplines of physiology, psychology and philosophy.
His twelve-hundred page masterwork, "The Principles of Psychology" (1890), is a rich blend of physiology,
psychology, philosophy, and personal reflection that has given us such ideas as “the stream of thought.
It contains seeds of pragmatism and phenomenology, and influenced generations of thinkers in Europe and America,
including Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, Edmund Husserl and John Dewey.
The belief that religious experience involves much a supernatural domain, mostly inaccessible to science but
accessible to the individual human subject, occupied his thoughts.
He made some of his most important philosophical contributions in the last decade of his life, defending
anti-pragmatic and mystical view that concepts distort rather
than reveal reality, which he described in "A Pluralistic Universe" and his views about religion, truth, knowledge,
reality and philosophy, he presented in his work "Pragmatism".
(1842 - 1910)
The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.
~ William James
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
Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur
them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive
nervousness on their behalf.
~ William James
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith
beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.
~ William James
'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
The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.
~ William James
Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.
~ William James
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
~ William James
Our faith is faith in someone else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case.
~ William James
There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the
saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.
~ William James
To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not
directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.
~ William James
A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.
~ William James
Time itself comes in drops.
~ William James
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your
belief will help create the fact.
~ William James
Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is
a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not
govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.
~ William James
If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.
~ William James
A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.
~ William James
If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.
~ William James
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
~ William James
Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference
between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.
~ William James
Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
~ William James
Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.
~ William James
Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
~ William James
Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
~ William James
The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.
~ William James
If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
~ William James
Dante Alighieri was the greatest of Italian poets, and, many readers think, one of the greatest poets that Western civilization has produced.
He wrote the epic work Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy) in dialect Italian. Divina Commedia represented the cosmology and
cosmogony of Dante's day. Dante also wrote De Monarchia, a treatise on political science. He believed that the purpose of government
was to preserve peace and the best form was a world monarchy. According to his concept, universe was a perfect, hierarchal, intelligible cosmos.
(1265-1321)
There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.
~ Charles Dickens
Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
~ George Bernard Shaw
You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.
~ Friedrich NietzscheMore Proverbs
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