William James Quotes

Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism.

Like Midas, the Rationalist is always in the unfortunate position of not being able to touch anything, without transforming it into an abstraction; he can never get a square meal of experience.

You can't be a part-time Richard Dawkins.

I'm English enough to feel something of a gut-reaction to modernism, to continental philosophising and anything that smacks of a refusal to pay attention to the forensics: the empirical facts on the ground.

It hinders the creative work of the mind if the intellect examines too closely the ideas as they pour in.

You can talk good ideas out of existence.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

When works get too intellectual, they lose their intensity.

The sexiest people are thinkers. Nobody's interested in somebody who's just vain with a hole in their head, talking about the latest thing - there is no latest thing. It's all rubbish.

I have seldom met an intelligent person whose views were not narrowed and distorted by religion.

PowerPoint makes us stupid.

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

You can get so well educated in America that your thoughts become detached from common sense. You can get so complicated in your thinking that the obvious isn't real to you anymore.

Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. ... Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable.

It is the mission of the press to disseminate intellect and at the same time destroy receptivity to it.

If you've never met a student from the University of Chicago, I'll describe him to you. If you give him a glass of water, he says, 'This is a glass of water. But is it a glass of water? And if it is a glass of water, why is it a glass of water?' And eventually he dies of thirst.

Philosophy, as the modern world knows it, is only intellectual club-swinging.

Intellectualism, though by no means confined to doubters, is often the sole piety of the skeptic.

I have a theory that the Internet makes people stupider. And Also FOX News makes people stupider.

Thinking doesn't pay. Just makes you discontented with what you see around you.

Modern man's besetting temptation is to sacrifice his direct perceptions and spontaneous feelings to his reasoned reflections; to prefer in all circumstances the verdict of his intellect to that of his immediate intuitions.

My favorite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence'.

There is nothing higher than reason.

Islam is based on naql (texts) and ‘aql (intellect). Some people just have the texts – we call them naql-heads.

This then is the age of reason.