All Quotes

"The American psychologist William James discussed consciousness at some length. In his monumental work The Principles of Psychology... he described five properties of what he called "thought." Every thought, he wrote, tends to be part of personal consciousness. Thought is always changing, is sensibly continuous, and appears to deal with objects independent of itself. In addition, thought focuses on some objects to the exclusion of others. In other words, it involves attention. Of attention he wrote, in an oft-quoted passage: "Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several possible objects or trains of thought. ...It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others."

"I revelled in the keen analysis of William James, Josiah Royce and young George Santayana. But it was James with his pragmatism and Albert Bushnell Hart with his research method, that turned me back from the lovely but sterile land of philosophic speculation, to the social sciences as the field for gathering and interpreting that body of fact which would apply to my program for the Negro. As undergraduate, I had talked frankly with William James about teaching philosophy, my major subject. He discouraged me, not by any means because of my record in his classes. He used to give me A's and even A-plus, but as he said candidly, there is "not much chance for anyone earning a living as a philosopher.""

"Little is written about revolutionaries, let alone Jews who became atheists, "idealists," some people might term them, not "realists." I like to quote William James, who said, "The world can and has been changed by those to whom the ideal and the real are dynamically contiguous." It was their struggle to do this and make needed changes."

"Ruburt tuned in to the world view of a man known dead. He was not directly in communication with William James. He was aware, however, of the universe through William James' world view. As you might tune into a program on a television set, Ruburt tuned into the view of reality now held in the mind of William James. Because that view necessarily involved emotions, Ruburt felt some sense of emotional contact — but only with the validity of the emotions. Each person has such a world view, whether living or dead in your terms, and that "living picture" exists despite tome or space. It can be perceived by others."

"The dogma is one of repetition; a ritual nonsense is uttered, in a loud voice; and suitable tests for the conforming of other scientists and the rest of the citizenry are performed by these, who-working scientists, educators, politicians, critics of all forms-now will swear they are behaving scientifically. William James met one such, in the person of a lady from Boston. As F. O. Matthiessen tells it, James was presenting one of his lucid, cogent arguments, and paused to say ironically, "That is like asking 'What holds the world up?"" The lady from Boston, impatient with all the talk, answered with clipped decision, "A rock." James wanted to take this farther-"What holds the rock up?" he asked. The lady said, "Another rock." "And that rock," James pursued, "what holds it up?" The lady stiffened. "Young man," she said in a voice that a dog-hater might use on an off-bounds Pekinese, "let me make myself clear: it's rocks, all the way!""

"He was inventive and he was positive, quick to affirm the latest ideas that flashed upon him without asking the consent of the ideas which he had already affirmed--- more concerned with the new wine than the old bottles. Nevertheless there is in James's thought that unconscious self-consistency which is the miracle of creative minds."

"Suppose Jonathan Edwards had been born a woman; suppose William James, for that matter, had been born a woman? (The invalid seclusion of his sister Alice is suggestive.) Even from men, New England took its psychic toll; many of its geniuses seemed peculiar in one way or another, particularly along the lines of social intercourse...Emily Dickinson-viewed by her bemused contemporary Thomas Higginson as "partially cracked," by the twentieth century as fey or pathological-has increasingly struck me as a practical woman, exercising her gift as she had to, making choices."

"As a therapist, Jeanna Eichenbaum works deep in trenches of the LGBTQQI community, offering trauma therapy as well as psychedelic integration support, which she has been trained in extensively...She said one of the qualities of religious experience as described by William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience is, "A feeling that one has somehow encountered "the true self" (a sense that mystical experiences reveal the nature of our true, cosmic self: one that is beyond life and death, beyond difference and duality, and beyond ego and selfishness.""

"Akta dig för fiendegåvor."

"Alla goda ting är tre."

"Alla känner apan, men apan känner ingen."

"Alla sätt är bra utom de dåliga."

"Alla veta råd, förutom den i våndan står."

"Alla vägar bär till Rom."

"Alla är vi barn i början."

"Alla vill vara herrar, men ingen vill bära säcken."

"Allt är inte guld som glimmar."

"Allt/allting/var sak har sin tid."

"Alltför ödmjukt är förklädd högfärd."

"Anfall är bästa försvar."

"Arbete gör sömnen ljuf ( söt . )"

"Arga katter får rivet skinn."

"Att skiljas är att dö en smula."

"Att försvara ett fel är att fela igen."

"Att våga är att tappa fotfästet en stund, att inte våga är att förlora sig själv."

"Av barn, fyllon och dårar får man höra sanningen."

"Av intet blir intet."

"Av skadan blir man vis."

"Avund hindrar sin Herre mest ."

"Avundsjukan vilar aldrig."

"Bara döda fiskar följer strömmen."

"Barn gör som du gör, inte som du säger."

"Behandla andra som du själv vill bli behandlad."

"Betala lika med lika."

"Blod är tjockare än vatten."

"Blott Sverige svenska krusbär har."

"Borsta framför din egen dörr först."

"Borta bra men hemma bäst."

"Bra karl reder sig själv."

"Bränt barn skyr elden."

"Bäst hålla upp medan leken är god."

"Bättre brödlös än rådlös."

"Bäst att ta det säkra för det osäkra."

"Bäst bli klok av annans skada."

"Daggen faller både på lort och lilja."

"Egenkär är ingen kär."

"Egennytta är en bottenlös bytta."

"Egennyttan vill gerna ha första dansen."

"Eget beröm luktar illa."

"Eget samvete är mer än tusende tungor."