When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice. William James More Quotes by William James More Quotes From William James No one sees further into a generalization than his own knowledge of detail extends. William James generalizationdetails Round about the accredited and orderly facts of every science there ever floats a sort of dust-cloud of exceptional observations, of occurrences minute and irregular and seldom met with, which it always proves more easy to ignore than to attend to... Anyone will renovate his science who will steadily look after the irregular phenomena, and when science is renewed, its new formulas often have more of the voice of the exceptions in them than of what were supposed to be the rules. William James voicedustscience Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase of equilibrium in such a structure is marked by what we may call a new set of habits. William James strongsciencemean So long as antimilitarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to realize the full inwardness of the situation. William James mightwarlong In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly. William James cornersmysteryheart Faith branches off the highroad before reason begins William James branchespoliticalreason Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality. William James truthmeanreality The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example to work on others as it may. William James examplefaithmay When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in. William James evilmenreality The difference between the first and second-best things in art absolutely seems to escape verbal definition -- it is a matter of a hair, a shade, an inward quiver of some kind -- yet what miles away in the point of preciousness! William James differenceshairart It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call something there, more deep and more general than any of the special and particular senses by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed. William James psychologyfeelingsreality The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening. William James essencegivingmen We are thinking beings, and we cannot exclude the intellect from participating in any of our functions. William James intellectfunctionthinking Lay plans as if we were to be immortal. William James immortalityplansifs No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed. William James punishmentpoliticspolitical The university most worthy of rational admiration is that one in which your lonely thinker can feel himself lonely, most positively furthered, and most richly fed William James fedsadmirationlonely We need only in cold blood to act as if the thing in question were real and it will infallibly end by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. William James growingrealblood It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk. William James politicspoliticalnatural The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains; and the 'evolution' of brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms came to be so caught and jammed. William James selfbrainscience At bottom, the whole concern of religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe. William James acceptancewisdomwise
