It matters not to an empiricist from what quarter an hypothesis may come to him: he may have acquired it by fair means or by foul; passion may have whispered or accident suggested it; but if the total drift of thinking continues to confirm it, that is what he means by its being true.

— William James

William James Quotes

The aim of science is always to reduce complexity to simplicity.

— William James

But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them theyare sure to combine.

— William James

As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different pace of its parts. Like a bird ’s life, it seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings.

— William James

Hogamus, higamous Man is polygamous Higamus, hogamous Woman monogamous.

— William James

The study a posteriori of the distribution of consciousness shows it to be exactly such as we might expect in an organ added for the sake of steering a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself.

— William James

The impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race.

— William James

No decision is, in itself, a decision.

— William James

for Better Decisions

Marvelous as may be the power of my dog to understand my moods, deathless as his affection and fidelity, his mental state is as unsolved a mystery to me as it was to my remotest ancestor.

— William James

The trail of the human serpent is thus over everything.

— William James

Everything which is demanded is by that fact a good.

— William James

The truth remains that, after adolescence has begun, “words, words, words,” must constitute a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what the human being has to learn.

— William James

Conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child’s small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity.

— William James

So long as antimilitarists propose no substitute for war’s disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to realize the full inwardness of the situation.

— William James

The aim of medicine is to prevent disease and prolong life, the ideal of medicine is to eliminate the need of a physician.

— William James Mayo

Experience is the great teacher; unfortunately, experience leaves mental scars, and scar tissue contracts.

— William James Mayo

The glory of medicine is that it is constantly moving forward, that there is always more to learn. The ills of today do not cloud the horizon of tomorrow, but act as a spur to greater effort.

— William James Mayo

Unfortunately, only a small number of patients with peptic ulcer are financially able to make a pet of an ulcer.

— William James Mayo

Given one well-trained physician of the highest type and he will do better work for a thousand people than ten specialists.

— William James Mayo

The examining physician often hesitates to make the necessary examination because it involves soiling the finger.

— William James Mayo

Machines Need to be Productive. People Need to be Effective.

— James William Benson

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