"With no attempt there can be no failure; with no failure no humiliation."
Read quote
5 likes
Quote collection
William James quotes (page 20 of 36)
716 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but mutually ignore each other."
Read quote
5 likes
"Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification processes"
Read quote
5 likes
"Procrastination is attitude's natural assassin. There's nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task"
Read quote
5 likes
"Owing to the fact that all experience is a process, no point of view can ever be the last one"
Read quote
5 likes
"The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives."
Read quote
5 likes
"Truth happens to an idea"
Read quote
5 likes
"True to her inveterate habit, rationalism reverts to 'principles,' and thinks that when an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular solution."
Read quote
5 likes
"Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it is also tinged by what absorbs it."
Read quote
5 likes
"A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock"
Read quote
5 likes
"We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in sight of our fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind."
Read quote
5 likes
"Life feels like a real fight - as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem."
Read quote
5 likes
"We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyse them."
Read quote
5 likes
"As the brain-changes are continuous, so do all these consciousnesses melt into each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but one protracted consciousness, one unbroken stream."
Read quote
5 likes
"Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout."
Read quote
5 likes
"Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract"
Read quote
5 likes
"The deepest hunger in human beings is the desire to be appreciated."
Read quote
5 likes
"If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed."
Read quote
5 likes
"Deepest principle of human nature is to be appreciated."
Read quote
5 likes
"Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system"
Read quote
5 likes