William James
Father of American psychology
Most quoted
"A man's Self is the sum total of all that he CAN call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down."
— from The Principles of Psychology, 1890
"Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine."
— from The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902
"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."
— from Talks to Teachers on Psychology, 1899
All quotes by William James (263)
The world is a place of constant chaos.
The world is a place of constant meaning.
The world is a place of constant absurdity.
The world is a place of constant hope.
The world is a place of constant despair.
The world is a place of constant joy.
The world is a place of constant sorrow.
The world is a place of constant love.
The world is a place of constant hate.
The world is a place of constant peace.
A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him and carry an image of him in their mind.
Our experience is what we agree to attend to.
The community of philosophers has been divided into two camps, the 'tender-minded' and the 'tough-minded.'
The cash-value of an idea is its practical consequences.
The will to believe.
No one is more hopelessly enslaved than he who falsely believes he is free.
The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, if only we could be quite sure there is a God to tame him.
The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact.
Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent.
The stream of consciousness.
Contemporaries of William James
Other Psychologys born within 50 years of William James (1842–1910).