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A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

— William James Attributed

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Source, in full

in Clifton Fadiman, American Treasury, 1455–1955, p. 719 (1955). Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989). A similar thought was expressed by Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw): "Education is a good thing generally, but most folks educate their prejudices".—Everybody's Friend, or Josh Billing's [sic] Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor, p. 592 (1874). Spelling corrected.

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Mind

More quotes by William James

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Pacifists ought to enter more deeply into the aesthetical and ethical point of view of their opponents.

The Moral Equivalent of War (1906)

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

The Principles of Psychology (1890)

The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.

Collected Essays and Reviews (1920)

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being.

The Letters of William James (1920)

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The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error.

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The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: William James (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.