William James

William James (1842 - 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist that developed the philosophy of pragmatism.

Truth is what works.
William James

Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.
William James

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
William James

'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.
William James

The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
William James

The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.
William James

To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.
William James

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.
William James

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.
William James