95 quotes
We are accustomed to speak of ideas as reproduced, as passed from mind to mind, as similar or dissimilar to one another, and, in short, as if they were substantial things; nor can any reasonable objection be raised to such expressions.
The Law of Mind (1892)
Let me now try to gather up all these odds and ends of commentary and restate the law of mind, in a unitary way.
The Law of Mind (1892)
It is ...easy to be certain. One has only to be sufficiently vague.
Collected Papers (1931)
Indeed, even this last moment will be recognized like the rest, at least, be just beginning to be so.
The Law of Mind (1892)
We have here a question of difficulty, analogous to the question of nominalism and realism.
The Law of Mind (1892)
Do not block the way of inquiry.
Collected Papers (1931)
Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings you conceive the objects of your conception to have. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object.
Collected Papers (1931)
You are of all my friends the one who illustrates pragmatism in its most needful forms. You are a jewel of pragmatism.
One of the most marked features about the law of mind is that it makes time to have a definite direction of flow from past to future.
The Law of Mind (1892)
Consciousness must essentially cover an interval of time; for if it did not, we could gain no knowledge of time, and not merely no veracious cognition of it, but no conception whatever.
The Law of Mind (1892)
Some minds will jump here jump to the conclusion that a past idea cannot in any sense be present. But that is hasty and illogical.
The Law of Mind (1892)
I call a sign which stands for something merely because it resembles it, an icon. Icons are so completely substituted for their objects as hardly to be distinguished from them.
On The Algebra of Logic (1885)
Feelings, by being excited, become more easily excited, especially in the ways in which they have previously been excited. The consciousness of such a habit constitutes a general conception.
The Architecture of Theories (1891)
When anything is present to the mind, what is the very first and simplest character to be noted in it, in every case, no matter how little elevated the object may be? Certainly, it is its presentness.
Pragmatism and Pragmaticism (1903)
Were the ends of a person already explicit, there would be no room for development, for growth, for life; and consequently there would be no personality.
The Law of Mind (1892)
The first character of a general idea … is that it is living feeling … in its absence of boundedness a vague possibility of more than is present is directly felt.
The development of the human mind has practically extinguished all feelings, except a few sporadic kinds, [like] sound, colors, smells, warmth, etc., which now appear to be disconnected and separate.
The Law of Mind (1892)
The consciousness of a general idea has a certain "unity of the ego" in it, which is identical when it passes from one mind to another. It is, therefore, quite analogous to a person, and indeed, a person is only a particular kind of general idea.
True science is distinctively the study of useless things. For the useful things will get studied without the aid of scientific men.
A finite interval of time generally contains an innumerable series of feelings; and when these become welded together in association the result is a general idea.
The Law of Mind (1892)