173 quotes
The military instincts and ideals are as strong as ever, but they are confronted by reflective criticisms which sorely curb their ancient freedom.
The Moral Equivalent of War (1906)
It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.
The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.
The Principles of Psychology (1890)
Religion...is a man's total reaction upon life.
The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
I am well aware of how anarchic much of what I say may sound. Expressing myself thus abstractly and briefly, I may seem to despair of the very notion of truth.
The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way.
The Principles of Psychology (1890)
There is nothing to make one indignant in the mere fact that life is hard, that men should toil and suffer pain. The planetary conditions once for all are such, and we can stand it.
The Moral Equivalent of War (1906)
Common-sense contents itself with the unreconciled contradiction, laughs when it can, and weeps when it must, and makes, in short, a practical compromise, without trying a theoretical solution.
German Pessimism (1875)
I look forward to a future when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as between civilized peoples.
The Moral Equivalent of War (1906)
The warring gods and formulas of the various religions do indeed cancel each other, but there is a certain uniform deliverance in which religions all appear to meet.
The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Inferiority is always with us, and merciless scorn of it is the keynote of the military temper.
The Moral Equivalent of War (1906)
Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose.
The Sentiment of Rationality (1882)
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.
Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907)
Conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity.
The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
I have often thought that the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive.
The Letters of William James (1920)
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.
The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Creatures extremely low in the intellectual scale may have conception. All that is required is that they should recognize the same experience again. A polyp would be a conceptual thinker if a feeling of 'Hello! thingumbob again!' ever flitted through its mind.
The Principles of Psychology (1890)
It may end by seeming shameful to all of us that some of us have nothing but campaigning, and others nothing but unmanly ease.
The Moral Equivalent of War (1906)
Humbug is humbug, even though it bear the scientific name, and the total expression of human experience, as I view it objectively, invincibly urges me beyond the narrow 'scientific' bounds.
The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
The pivot round which the religious life... revolves, is the interest of the individual in his private personal destiny. Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.
The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)