William James
William James
William Jameswas an American philosopher and psychologist who was also trained as a physician. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, James was one of the leading thinkers of the late nineteenth century and is believed by many to be one of the most influential philosophers the United States has ever produced, while others have labelled him the "Father of American psychology". Along with Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey, he is considered to be...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth11 January 1842
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.
Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.
The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.
My experience is what I agree to attend to.
What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!
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.
There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.
A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.
I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are IMPOSSIBLE.
The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated.
Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves ... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
Truth in our ideas means their power to work.
Every time a resolve or fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing fruit, it is worse than a chance lost; it works to hinder future emotions from taking the normal path of discharge.
Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.