There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

—William James

philosophy philosophers

About William James

Portrait of William James

William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, he is considered to be one of the leading thinkers of the late 19th century, one of the most influential philosophers and is...

More quotations from William James

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

—William James

Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, stains the white radiance of eternity.

—William James

Belief creates the actual fact.

—William James

We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the moneymaking street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition. We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul.

—William James

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.

—William James

humor common sense speed

More quotations tagged with “philosophy”

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

wisdom philosophy body

Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.

—Richard Feynman

philosophy science

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.

—Henry David Thoreau

news philosophy gossip

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.

love hate apathy indifference philosophy

Our education, our environment, our whole culture insists that we must become something. Our philosophies, our religions and sacred books all say the same thing. But now I see that the very process of becoming something implies envy, which means that I am not satisfied with being what I am; and I want to understand what I am, I want to find out why I am always comparing myself with another, trying to become something; and in understanding what I am there is no need for discipline. In the process of that understanding, integration comes into being. The contradiction in me yields to the understanding of myself, and this in turn brings an action which is integral, whole.

—Jiddu Krishnamurti in Think on These Things

religion philosophy being becoming