Person

William James

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Notable quotes

“All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.”
— Lecture at the Harvard Divinity School (13 March 1884); published in the The Unitarian Review and Religious Magazine as The Dilemma of Determinism (September 1884)
“Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits ... A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life.”
— Ch. 9
“My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing.”
— Sometimes paraphrased as "Thinking is for doing", perhaps originally by S.T. Fiske (1992)
“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”
— Correspondence with Helen Keller, 1908, in The Correspondence of William James: April 1908–August 1910, Vol. 12, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004, page 135, as cited in: Academics in Action!: A Model for Community-engaged Research, Teaching, and Service (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016, page 71)
“I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.”
— Lecture III, Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered
“The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That — with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success — is our national disease.”
— To H. G. Wells (11 September 1906)

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.

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“All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.”
— Lecture at the Harvard Divinity School (13 March 1884); published in the The Unitarian Review and Religious Magazine as The Dilemma of Determinism (September 1884)
“Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits ... A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life.”
— Ch. 9
“My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing.”
— Sometimes paraphrased as "Thinking is for doing", perhaps originally by S.T. Fiske (1992)
“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”
— Correspondence with Helen Keller, 1908, in The Correspondence of William James: April 1908–August 1910, Vol. 12, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004, page 135, as cited in: Academics in Action!: A Model for Community-engaged Research, Teaching, and Service (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016, page 71)
“I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.”
— Lecture III, Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered
“The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That — with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success — is our national disease.”
— To H. G. Wells (11 September 1906)

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.