Philosophy Quote by William James — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”

“the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess sucess is our national disease”

“There is something almost shocking in the notion of so chaste a function carrying this Kantian hurlyburly in her womb.”

“To change ones life, start immediately, do it flamboyantly, no exceptions.”

“See the exquisite contrast of the types of mind! The pragmatist clings to facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in particular cases, and generalises. Truth, for him, becomes a class-name for all sorts of definite working-values in experience. For the rationalist it remains a pure abstraction, to the bare name of which we must defer. When the pragmatist undertakes to show in detail just why we must defer, the rationalist is unable to recognise the concretes from which his own abstraction is taken. He accuses us of denying truth; whereas we have only sought to trace exactly why people follow it and always ought to follow it. Your typical ultra-abstractions fairly shudders at concreteness: other things equal, he positively prefers the pale and spectral. If the two universes were offered, he would always choose the skinny outline rather than the rich thicket of reality. It is so much purer, clearer, nobler.”

“All statistics have outliers.”

“All religions are based on obsolete terminology.”

“Sed nescio quo modo nihil tam absurde dici potest quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosphorum. (There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.)”

“Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming.”

“What we do not confront, we inhabit.”

“Ik kwam er achter dat ik er mijn hele leven heus niet naar had verlang om te leven - als wat anderen doen tenminste leven genoemd kan worden - maar wel om mezelf te kunnen uitdrukken.”