William James Quotes

I see the beard and cloak, but I don't yet see a philosopher. -Video barbam et pallium; philosophum nondum video

To me personally the only function of philosophy is to teach us to take life more lightly and gayly than the average businessman does, for no businessman who does not retire at fifty, if he can, is in my eyes a philosopher.

I think, when people hear the word 'philosophy,' they think of Plato and a bunch of people sitting around in their robes pontificating about life and how it should be. But really, somebody who is an active philosopher should not only be thinking of these things but putting them into practice.

Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.

The Study of philosophy is not that we may know what men have thought, but what the truth of things is.

What sort of philosophy one chooses depends on what sort of person one is.

The picture which the philosopher draws of the world is surely not one in which every stroke is necessitated by pure logic.

We tend to think of philosophies as produced by professional philosophers. Traditionally, this has meant people who have written dissertations on obscure subjects or who spend most of their day in libraries. But every human is, in an important sense, a carrier of an implicit philosophy - evident in their choices, pronouncements and commitments.

I don't have a philosophy in a nutshell; I would go on and on too much.

Morality is always derivative. It stems from one's worldview.

Everybody's got a worldview. Everybody's betting their life on something. ... You just better know why you're betting what you're betting on.

Having a personal philosophy is like having a pet marmoset, because it may be very attractive when you acquire it, but there may be situations when it will not come in handy at all.

Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits.

Philosophy cannot be taught; it is the application of the sciences to truth.

I would welcome the passing of the idea of philosophy as defined by a method of conceptual analysis. But that is not the passing of philosophy, and it leaves the philosopher with the task of grasping natures or essences (among other things).

Have a spiritual basis which guides you in life. Have a philosophy of life to live by.

Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.

Are you a philosopher? Where's your sponge?

The great question of philosophy remains: If life is meaningless, what can be done about alphabet soup?

Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it?

One cannot live through a long stretch of years without forming some philosophy of life.

Philosophers are in the habit of setting themselves before life and experience.

As a Roman philosopher, Cicero, said of him a few hundred years later, Socrates 'called philosophy down from the sky and established her in the towns and introduced her into homes and forced her to investigate life, ethics, good and evil.

Therefore, even the lover of myth is a philosopher; for myth is composed of wonder.

One of the main reasons for the existence of philosophy is not that it enables you to find truth (it can never do that) but that it does provide you a refuge for definitions.