Background Image
If Theological Ideas Prove To Have A Value For Concrete Life, They Will Be True, For Pragmatism, In The Sense Of Being Good For So Much. How Much More They Are True, Will Depend Entirely On Their Relations To The Other Truths That Also Have To Be Acknowledged.
-William James
Please Wait....
Translating....

If Theological Ideas Prove

William James
If Theological Ideas Prove To Have A Value For Concrete Life, They Will Be True, For Pragmatism, In The Sense Of Being Good For So Much. How Much More They Are True, Will Depend Entirely On Their Relations To The Other Truths That Also Have To Be Acknowledged.
Views: 5
Topic
Ideas
Relation
Being True
More From William James
Truth Happens To An Idea
Truth
Ideas
Happens
We Must Frankly Confess, Then, Using Our Empirical Common Sense And Ordinary Practical Prejudices, That In The World That Actually Is, The Virtues Of Sympathy, Charity, And Non-resistance May Be, And Often Have Been, Manifested In Excess. ... You Will Agree To This In General, For In Spite Of The Gospel, In Spite Of Quakerism, In Spite Of Tolstoi, You Believe In Fighting Fire With Fire, In Shooting Down Usurpers, Locking Up Thieves, And Freezing Out Vagabonds And Swindlers.
Believe
Fighting
Fire
Truth, As Any Dictionary Will Tell You, Is A Property Of Certain Of Our Ideas. It Means Their Agreement, As Falsity Means Their Disagreement, With Reality.
Truth
Mean
Reality
Man Lives By Habits Indeed, But What He Lives For Is Thrill And Excitements. ... From Time Immemorial War Has Been ... The Supremely Thrilling Excitement.
War
Men
Thrill
There Is No More Miserable Human Being Than One In Whom Nothing Is Habitual But Indecision, And For Whom The Lighting Of Every Cigar, The Drinking Of Every Cup, The Time Of Rising And Going To Bed Every Day, And The Beginning Of Every Bit Of Work, Are Subjects Of Express Volitional Deliberation.
Drinking
Bed
Rising
Most People Live, Whether Physically, Intellectually Or Morally, In A Very Restricted Circle Of Their Potential Being.
Circles
People
Sith
Science As Such Assuredly Has No Authority, For She Can Only Say What Is, Not What Is Not.
Science
Authority
Accounts
Even If Matter Could Do Every Outward Thing That God Does, The Idea Of It Would Not Work As Satisfactorily, Because The Chief Callfor A God On Modern Men's Part Is For A Being Who Will Inwardly Recognize Them And Judge Them Sympathetically. Matter Disappoints This Craving Of Our Ego, So God Remains For Most Men The Truer Hypothesis, And Indeed Remains So For Definite Pragmatic Reasons.
Men
Ideas
Judging
The Great Use Of Life Is To Spend It For Something That Will Outlast It." "this Life Is Worth Living, We Can Say, Since It Is What We Make It." "believe That Life Is Worth Living And Your Belief Will Help Create The Fact.
Inspirational Life
Believe
Use
To Be Conscious Means Not Simply To Be, But To Be Reported, Known, To Have Awareness Of One's Being Added To That Being.
Mean
Awareness
Conscious
Religion, Therefore, As I Now Ask You Arbitrarily To Take It, Shall Mean For Us The Feelings, Acts, And Experiences Of Individual Men In Their Solitude, So Far As They Apprehend Themselves To Stand In Relation To Whatever They May Consider The Divine. Since The Relation May Be Either Moral, Physical, Or Ritual, It Is Evident That Out Of Religion In The Sense In Which We Take It, Theologies, Philosophies, And Ecclesiastical Organizations May Secondarily Grow.
Philosophy
Mean
Men
Many Persons Nowadays Seem To Think That Any Conclusion Must Be Very Scientific If The Arguments In Favor Of It Are Derived From Twitching Of Frogs' Legs (especially If The Frogs Are Decapitated) And That, On The Other Hand, Any Doctrine Chiefly Vouched For By The Feelings Of Human Beings (with Heads On Their Shoulders) Must Be Benighted And Superstitious.
Science
Thinking
Hands
There Is But One Cause Of Human Failure. And That Is Man's Lack Of Faith In His True Self.
Inspirational
Self Esteem
Failure
If The Topic Be Highly Abstract, Show Its Nature By Concrete Examples. If It Be Unfamiliar, Trace Some Point Of Analogy In It With The Known. If It Be Inhuman, Make It Figure As Part Of A Story. If It Be Difficult, Couple Its Acquisition With Some Prospect Of Personal Gain. Above All Things, Make Sure That It Shall Run Through Certain Inner Changes, Since No Unvarying Object Can Possibly Hold The Mental Field For Long.
Running
Couple
Educational
Human Beings Can Alter Their Lives By Altering Their Attitudes Of Mind.
Inspirational
Positive
Success
Just For Today I Will Exercise My Soul In Three Ways: I Will Do Somebody A Good Turn And Not Get Found Out. I Will Do At Least Two Things I Don't Want To Do
Inspiration
Exercise
Two
With Mere Good Intentions Hell Is Proverbially Paved.
Good Intentions
Hell
Intention
Life Shall Be Built In Doing And Suffering And Creating.
Creating
Suffering
Built
All That We Need Explicitly To Note Is That, The More The Passive Attention Is Relied On, By Keeping The Material Interesting; And The Less The Kind Of Attention Requiring Effort Is Appealed To; The More Smoothly And Pleasantly The Classroom Work Goes On.
Philosophy
Educational
Interesting
The War Against War Is Going To Be No Holiday Excursion Or Camping Party.
War
Party
Holiday
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.
War
Long
Might
I Have Often Thought The Best Way To Define A Man's Character Would Be To Seek Out The Particular Mental Or Moral Attitude In Which, When It Comes Upon Him, He Felt Himself Most Deeply And Intensely Active And Alive. At Such Moments There Is A Voice Inside Which Speaks And Says: This Is The Real Me!.
Life
Success
Attitude
Invention, Using The Term Most Broadly, And Imitation, Are The Two Legs, So To Call Them, On Which The Human Race Historically Has Walked.
Race
Two
Legs
In All Primary School Work The Principle Of Multiple Impressions Is Well Recognized.
Philosophy
Educational
School
An Impression Which Simply Flows In At The Pupil's Eyes Or Ears And In No Way Modifies His Active Life, Is An Impression Gone To Waste. It Is Physiologically Incomplete... Its Motor Consequences Are What Clinch It.
Eye
Waste
Flow
Seek Out That Particular Mental Attribute Which Makes You Feel Most Deeply And Vitally Alive, Along With Which Comes The Inner Voice Which Says, 'this Is The Real Me,' And When You Have Found That Attitude, Follow It.
Inspirational
Attitude
Business
We Must Make Automatic And Habitual, As Early As Possible, As Many Useful Actions As We Can, And As Carefully Guard Against The Growing Into Ways That Are Likely To Be Disadvantageous.
Educational
Philosophy
Science
The First Effect Of The Mind Growing Cultivated Is That Processes Once Multiple Get To Be Performed In A Single Act. Lazarus Has Called This The Progressive "condensation" Of Thought. ... Steps Really Sink From Sight. An Advanced Thinker Sees The Relations Of His Topics Is Such Masses And So Instantaneously That When He Comes To Explain To Younger Minds It Is Often Hard ... Bowditch, Who Translated And Annotated Laplace's Méchanique Céleste, Said That Whenever His Author Prefaced A Proposition By The Words "it Is Evident," He Knew That Many Hours Of Hard Study Lay Before Him.
Science
Sight
Mind
The Lunatic's Visions Of Horror Are All Drawn From The Material Of Daily Fact.
Insanity
Vision
Facts
If This Life Is Not A Real Fight, In Which Something Is Eternally Gained For The Universe By Success, It Is No Better Than A Game Of Private Theatricals From Which One May Withdraw At Will. But It Feels Like A Real Fight.
Life
Success
Real
To Consider Hypotheses Is Surely Always Better Than To Dogmatize Ins Blaue Hinein
Truth
Hypothesis
Man's Chief Difference From The Brutes Lies In The Exuberant Excess Of His Subjective Propensities. Prune His Extravagance, Sober Him, And You Undo Him.
Lying
Men
Differences
Our Ideas Must Agree With Realities, Be Such Realities Concrete Or Abstract, Be They Facts Or Be They Principles, Under Penalty Of Endless Inconsistency And Frustration.
Reality
Frustration
Ideas
I Take It That No Man Is Educated Who Has Never Dallied With The Thought Of Suicide.
Suicide
Suicidal
Men
The Difference Between Objective And Subjective Extension Is One Of Relation To A Context Solely.
Differences
Relation
Extensions
There Can Be No Existence Of Evil As A Force To The Healthy-minded Individual.
Evil
Healthy
Individual
Philosophy Lives In Words, But Truth And Fact Well Up Into Our Lives In Ways That Exceed Verbal Formulation.
Philosophy
Way
Facts
Keep The Faculty Of Effort Alive In You By A Little Gratuitous Exercise Every Day.
Life And Love
Exercise
Effort
The Intellectual Life Of Man Consists Almost Wholly In His Substitution Of Conceptual Order For The Perceptual Order In Which His Experience Originally Comes.
Men
Order
Intellectual
What Holds Attention Determines Action.
Attention
Action
Determine
New Habits Can Be Launched.
Habit
New Habits
There Are 3 Rules To Follow If You Want To Change; (1) Start Immediately, (2) Do It Flamboyantly, (3) No Exceptions.
Want
Exception
Ifs
...these Healers...my Intellect Has Been Unable To Assimilate Their Theories....but Their Facts Are Patent And Startling; And Anything That Interferes With The Multiplication Of Such Facts, And With Our Freest Opportunity Of Observing And Studying Them, Will, I Believe, Be A Public Calamity.
Believe
Dark
Opportunity
Life Is One Long Struggle Between Conclusions Based On Abstract Ways Of Conceiving Cases, And Opposite Conclusions Prompted By Our Instinctive Perception Of Them.
Respect
Struggle
Adversity
The Greatest Empiricists Among Us Are Only Empiricists On Reflection: When Left To Their Instincts, They Dogmatize Like Infallible Popes.
Reflection
Pope
Instinct
Any Object Not Interesting In Itself May Become Interesting Through Becoming Associated With An Object In Which An Interest Already Exists. The Two Associated Objects Grow, As It Were, Together; The Interesting Portion Sheds Its Quality Over The Whole; And Thus Things Not Interesting In Their Own Right Borrow An Interest Which Becomes As Real And As Strong As That Of Any Natively Interesting Thing.
Strong
Real
Educational
Knowledge About Life Is One Thing; Effective Occupation Of A Place In Life, With Its Dynamic Currents Passing Through Your Being, Is Another.
Knowledge
Occupation
Life Is
Metaphysics Means Nothing But An Unusually Obstinate Effort To Think Clearly.
Mean
Thinking
Effort
The Highest Flights Of Charity, Devotion, Trust, Patience, Bravery To Which The Wings Of Human Nature Have Spread Themselves, Have Been Flown For Religious Ideals.
Religious
Wings
Bravery
It Is As Important To Cultivate Your Silence Power As Your Word Power.
Silence
Important
Earnestness Means Willingness To Live With Energy, Though Energy Bring Pain.
Pain
Mean
Energy
Voices Of The Glorified Urge Us Onward. They Who Have Passed From The Semblances Of Time To The Realities Of Eternity Call Upon Us To Advance. The Rest That Awaits Us Invites Us Forward. We Do Not Pine For Our Rest Before God Wills It. We Long For No Inglorious Rest. We Are Thankful Rather For The Invaluable Training Of Difficulty, The Loving Discipline Of Danger And Strife. Yet In The Midst Of It All The Prospect Of Rest Invites Us Heavenward. Through All, And Above All, God Cries, "go Forward!" "come Up Higher!
Reality
Voice
Discipline
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.
Stay Positive
Feelings
Together
It Is So Human A Book That I Don't See How Belief In Its Divine Authority Can Survive The Reading Of It.
Bible
Religious
Book
It Is True That So Far As Wealth Gives Time For Ideal Ends And Exercise To Ideal Energies, Wealth Is Better Than Poverty And Ought To Be Chosen. But Wealth Does This In Only A Portion Of The Actual Cases. Elsewhere The Desire To Gain Wealth And The Fear To Lose It Are Our Chief Breeders Of Cowardice And Propagators Of Corruption. There Must Be Thousands Of Conjunctures In Which A Wealth-bound Man Must Be A Slave, Whilst A Man For Whom Poverty Has No Terrors Becomes A Freeman.
Exercise
Men
Giving
The Total Mental Efficiency Of A Man Is The Resultant Of The Working Together Of All His Faculties. He Is Too Complex A Being For Any One Of Them To Have The Casting Vote. If Any One Of Them Do Have The Casting Vote, It Is More Likely To Be The Strength Of His Desire And Passion, The Strength Of The Interest He Takes In What Is Proposed. Concentration, Memory, Reasoning Power, Inventiveness, Excellence Of The Senses, All Are Subsidiary To This.
Memories
Passion
Men
Never Suffer An Exception To Occur Till The New Habit Is Securely Rooted In Your Life. Each Lapse Is Like The Letting Fall Of A Ball Of String Which One Is Carefully Winding Up; A Single Slip Undoes More Than A Great Many Turns Will Wind Again.
Fall
Wind
Suffering
Habit Simplifies Our Movements, Makes Them Accurate, And Diminishes Fatigue.
Life
Happiness
Movement
Lives Based On Having Are Less Free Than Lives Based Either On Doing Or Being.
Inspirational
Life
Happiness Comes Of The Capacity To Feel Deeply, To Enjoy Simply, To Think Freely, To Risk Life, To Be Needed. Which Give Happiness. Thomas Jefferson We Never Enjoy Perfect Happiness; Our Most Fortunate Successes Are Mingled With Sadness; Some Anxieties Always Perplex The Reality Of Our Satisfaction.
Happiness
Sadness
Reality
When Two Minds Of A High Order, Interested In Kindred Subjects, Come Together, Their Conversation Is Chiefly Remarkable For The Summariness Of Its Allusions And The Rapidity Of Its Transitions. Before One Of Them Is Half Through A Sentence The Other Knows His Meaning And Replies. ... His Mental Lungs Breathe More Deeply, In An Atmosphere More Broad And Vast.
Science
Order
Two
The Unrest Which Keeps The Never Stopping Clock Of Metaphysics Going Is The Thought That The Nonexistence Of This World Is Just As Possible As Its Existence.
Stopping
Unrest
World
Philosophy, Beginning In Wonder, As Plato And Aristotle Said, Is Able To Fancy Everything Different From What It Is. It Sees The Familiar As If It Were Strange, And The Strange As If It Were Familiar. It Can Take Things Up And Lay Them Down Again. It Rouses Us From Our Native Dogmatic Slumber And Breaks Up Our Caked Prejudices.
Plato
Philosophy
Slumber
Language Is The Most Imperfect And Expensive Means Yet Discovered For Communicating Thought.
Mean
Imperfect
Language
... A Rule Of Thinking Which Would Absolutely Prevent Me From Acknowledging Certain Kinds Of Truth If Those ... Truths Were Really There, Would Be An Irrational Rule.
Philosophy
Thinking
Would Be
The Sway Of Alcohol Over Mankind Is Unquestionably Due To Its Power To Stimulate The Mystical Faculties Of Human Nature, Usually Crushed To Earth By The Cold Facts And Dry Criticisms Of The Sober Hour.
Beer
Alcohol
Criticism
Is Life Worth Living? It All Depends On The Liver.
Life
Humorous
Philosophical
The Exercise Of Prayer, In Those Who Habitually Exert It, Must Be Regarded By Us Doctors As The Most Adequate And Normal Of All The Pacifiers Of The Mind And Calmers Of The Nerves.
Prayer
Exercise
Doctors
Out Of Time We Cut 'days' And 'nights', 'summers' And 'winters.' We Say What, Each Part Of The Sensible Continuum Is, And All These Abstract Whats Are Concepts. The Intelletual Life Of Man Consists Almost Wholly In His Substitution Of A Conceptual Order For The Persceptual Order In Which His Experience Originally Comes.
Summer
Cutting
Winter
Actions Seems To Follow Feeling, But Really Actions 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. Thus The Sovereign Voluntary Path To Cheerfulness, If Our Cheerfulness Be Lost, Is To Sit Up Cheerfully And To Act And Speak As If Cheerfulness Were Already There.
Feelings
Together
Path
All Our Scientific And Philosophic Ideals Are Altars To Unknown Gods.
Philosophic
Ideals
Altars
We Are All Ready To Be Savage In Some Cause. The Difference Between A Good Man And A Bad One Is The Choice Of The Cause.
Men
Differences
Choices
Our Life Is Always Deeper Than We Know, Is Always More Divine Than It Seems, And Hence We Are Able To Survive Degradations And Despairs Which Otherwise Must Engulf Us.
Life
Survival
Despair
The Whole Drift Of My Education Goes To Persuade Me That The World Of Our Present Consciousness Is Only One Out Of Many Worlds Of Consciousness That Exist, And That Those Other Worlds Must Contain Experiences Which Have A Meaning For Our Life Also; And That Although In The Main Their Experiences And Those Of This World Keep Discrete, Yet The Two Become Continuous At Certain Points, And Higher Energies Filter In.
Other Worlds
Two
Filters
The Emotions Aren't Always Immediately Subject To Reason, But They Are Always Immediately Subject To Action.
Emotional
Feelings
Action
We Divert Our Attention From Disease And Death As Much As We Can; The Slaughterhouses Are Huddled Out Of Sight And Never Mentioned, So That The World We Recognize Officially In Literature And In Society Is A Poetic Fiction Far Handsomer, Cleaner And Better Than The World That Really Is.
Sight
Disease And Death
Attention
An Unlearned Carpenter Of My Acquaintance Once Said In My Hearing: "there Is Very Little Difference Between One Man And Another; But What Little There Is, Is Very Important." This Distinction Seems To Me To Go To The Root Of The Matter.
Men
Roots
Differences
To Suggest Personal Will And Effort To One All Sicklied O'er With The Sense Of Irremediable Impotence Is To Suggest The Most Impossible Of Things. What He Craves Is To Be Consoled In His Very Powerlessness, To Feel That The Spirit Of The Universe Recognizes And Secures Him, All Decaying And Failing As He Is.
Effort
Spirit
Impossible
This Overcoming Of All The Usual Barriers Between The Individual And The Absolute Is The Great Mystic Achievement. In Mystic States We Both Become One With The Absolute And We Become Aware Of Our Oneness. This Is The Everlasting And Triumphant Mystical Tradition, Hardly Altered By Differences Of Clime Or Creed.
Oneness
Differences
Achievement
I Don't See How An Epigram, Being A Bolt From The Blue, With No Introduction Or Cue, Ever Gets Itself Writ.
Blue
Introduction
Epigrams
Do Every Day Or Two Something For No Other Reason Than Its Difficulty.
Two
Reason
Habit
Effort Is A Measure Of A Man.
Sports
Hockey
Men
There Can Be No Difference Anywhere That Does Not Make A Difference Somewhere.
Differences
Making A Difference
Doe
It Is Only In The Lonely Emergencies Of Life That Our Creed Is Tested: Then Routine Maxims Fail, And We Fall Back On Our Gods.
Lonely
Fall
Routine
As Charles Lamb Says, There Is Nothing So Nice As Doing Good By Stealth And Being Found Out By Accident, So I Now Say It Is Even Nicer To Make Heroic Decisions And To Be Prevented By 'circumstances Beyond Your Control' From Ever Trying To Execute Them.
Nice
Decision
Trying
My Thinking Is First And Last And Always For The Sake Of My Doing, And I Can Only Do One Thing At A Time.
Thinking
Sake
Lasts
Ideas Are So Much Flat Psychological Surface Unless Some Mirrored Matter Gives Them Cognitive Lustre. This Is Why As A Pragmatisti Have So Carefully Posited 'reality' Ab Initio, And Why Throughout My Whole Discussion, I Remain An Epistemologist Realist.
Reality
Ideas
Giving
We Forget That Every Good That Is Worth Possessing Must Be Paid For In Strokes Of Daily Effort. We Postpone And Postpone Until Those Smiling Possibilities Are Dead... By Neglecting The Necessary Concrete Labor, By Sparing Ourselves The Little Daily Tax, We Are Positively Digging The Graves Of Our Higher Possibilities.
Effort
Digging
Littles
The Simplest Rudiment Of Mystical Experience Would Seem To Be That Deepened Sense Of The Significance Of A Maxim Or Formula Which Occasionally Sweeps Over One.
Mystical Experiences
Natural
Significance
Why May We Not Be In The Universe, As Our Dogs And Cats Are In Our Drawingrooms And Libraries?
Dog
Cat
Library
A Remarkable Parallel, Which I Think Has Never Been Noticed, Obtains Between The Facts Of Social Evolution On The One Hand, And Of Zological Evolution As Expounded By Mr. Darwin On The Other.
Thinking
Hands
Facts
So Our Self-feeling In This World Depends Entirely On What We Back Ourselves To Be And Do.
Self
Feelings
World
When A Superior Intellect And A Psychopathic Temperament Coalesce In The Same Individual, We Have The Best Possible Condition For The Kind Of Effective Genius That Gets Into The Biographical Dictionaries.
Bipolar
Genius
Kind
Materialism Means Simply The Denial That The Moral Order Is Eternal, And The Cutting Off Of Ultimate Hopes; Spiritualism Means Theaffirmation Of An Eternal Moral Order And The Letting Loose Of Hope.
Mean
Cutting
Order
In This Real World Of Sweat And Dirt, It Seems To Me That When A View Of Things Is 'noble,' That Ought To Count As Presumption Against Its Truth, And As A Philosophic Disqualification. The Prince Of Darkness May Be A Gentleman, As We Are Told He Is, But Whatever The God Of Earth And Heaven Is, He Can Surely Be No Gentleman.
Real
Views
Sweat
From A Pragmatic Point Of View, The Difference Between Living Against A Background Of Foreigness (an Indifferent Universe) And One Of Intimacy (a Benevolent Universe) Means The Difference Between A General Habit Of Wariness And One Of Trust.
Mean
Views
Differences
The Most Violent Revolutions In An Individuals Beliefs Leave Most Of His Old Order Standing. Time And Space, Cause And Effect, Nature And History, And Ones Own Biography Remain Untouched. New Truth Is Always A Go-between, A Smoother-over Of Transitions. It Marries Old Opinion To New Fact So As Ever To Show A Minimum Of Jolt, A Maximum Of Continuity.
Order
Space
Biographies
The Most Ancient Parts Of Truth . . . Also Once Were Plastic. They Also Were Called True For Human Reasons. They Also Mediated Between Still Earlier Truths And What In Those Days Were Novel Observations. Purely Objective Truth, Truth In Whose Establishment The Function Of Giving Human Satisfaction In Marrying Previous Parts Of Experience With Newer Parts Played No Role Whatsoever, Is Nowhere To Be Found. The Reasons Why We Call Things True Is The Reason Why They Are True, For To Be True Means Only To Perform This Marriage-function.
Truth
Mean
Giving
If You Care Enough For A Result, You Will Most Certainly Attain It.
Leadership
Motivation
Philosophical
Be Patient And Sympathetic With The Type Of Mind That Cuts A Poor Figure In Examinations. It May, In The Long Examination Which Life Sets Us, Come Out In The End In Better Shape Than The Glib And Ready Reproducer, Its Passions Being Deeper, Its Purposes More Worthy, Its Combining Power Less Commonplace, And Its Total Mental Output Consequently More Important.
Philosophy
Educational
Passion
We Never Fully Grasp The Import Of Any True Statement Until We Have A Clear Notion Of What The Opposite Untrue Statement Would Be.
Truth
Opposites
Would Be
We Must Not Just Patch And Tinker With Life. We Must Keep Renewing It. Embrace Novelty And Uniqueness.
Unique
Novelty
Embrace
The Gist Of The Matter Is This: Every Impression That Comes In From Without, Be It A Sentence Which We Hear, An Object Of Vision, Or An Effluvium Which Assails Our Nose, No Sooner Enters Our Consciousness Than It Is Drafted Off In Some Determinate Direction Or Other, Making Connection With The Other Materials Already There, And Finally Producing What We Call Our Reaction. The Particular Connections It Strikes Into Are Determined By Our Past Experiences And The 'associations' Of The Present Sort Of Impression With Them.
Philosophy
Educational
Past
The Most Any One Can Do Is To Confess As Candidly As He Can The Grounds For The Faith That Is In Him, And Leave His Example To Work On Others As It May.
Faith
Example
May
Let Sanguine Healthy-mindedness Do Its Best With Its Strange Power Of Living In The Moment And Ignoring And Forgetting, Still The Evil Background Is Really There To Be Thought Of, And The Skull Will Grin In At The Banquet.
Skulls
Evil
Healthy
True Ideas Are Those That We Can Assimilate, Validate, Corroborate, And Verify. False Ideas Are Those That We Cannot. That Is The Practical Difference It Makes To Us To Have True Ideas; That Therefore Is The Meaning Of Truth, For It Is All That Truth Is Known As.
Ideas
Differences
Truth Is
Social Evolution Is A Resultant Of The Interaction Of Two Wholly Distinct Factors: The Individual ... Bearing All The Power Of Initiative And Origination In His Hands; And, Second, The Social Environment With Its Power Of Adopting Or Rejecting Both Him And His Gifts. Both Factors Are Essential To Change. The Community Stagnates Without The Impulse Of The Individual. The Impulse Dies Away Without The Sympathy Of The Community.
Hands
Two
Community
A Man May Not Achieve Everything He Has Dreamed, But He Will Never Achieve Anything Great Without Having Dreamed It First.
Men
May
Firsts
'what Would Be Better For Us To Believe!' This Sounds Very Like A Definition Of Truth
Truth
Believe
Sound
Faith Means Belief In Something Concerning Which Doubt Is Theoretically Possible.
Faith
Believe
Philosophical
The Deepest Longing In The Human Breast Is The Desire For Appreciation.
Appreciation
Creativity
Desire
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.
Adolescence
Humans
Remains
[t]here Is Very Little Difference Between One Person And Another, But What Little Difference Ther Eis, Is Very Important.
Differences
Personality
Important
Philosophy Is At Once The Most Sublime And The Most Trivial Of Human Pursuits. It Works In The Minutest Crannies And It Opens Outthe Widest Vistas. It 'bakes No Bread', As Has Been Said, But It Can Inspire Our Souls With Courage.
Philosophy
Philosophical
Inspire
I Believe There Is No Source Of Deception In The Investigation Of Nature Which Can Compare With A Fixed Belief That Certain Kinds Of Phenomena Are Impossible.
Believe
Science
Deception
Whenever Two People Meet, There Are Really Six People Present. There Is Each Man As He Sees Himself, Each Man As The Other Person Sees Him, And Each Man As He Really Is.
Teamwork
Men
Two
Every Sort Of Energy And Endurance, Of Courage And Capacity For Handling Life's Evils, Is Set Free In Those Who Have Religious Faith.
Life
Religious
Courage
Effort Is The One Strictly Undervalued And Original Contribution We Make To This World.
Effort
World
Contribution
Genius... Means Little More Than The Faculty Of Perceiving In An Unhabitual Way.
Creativity
Mean
Science
The Deepest Human Need Is The Need To Be Appreciated.
Needs
Appreciated
Humans
The Deepest Hunger In Human Beings Is The Desire To Be Appreciated.
Friendship
Desire
Appreciated
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.
Spiritual
Children
Maturity
The Function Of Ignoring, Of Inattention, Is As Vital A Factor In Mental Progress As The Function Of Attention Itself.
Science
Mind
Progress
A Little Cooling Down Of Animal Excitability And Instinct, A Little Loss Of Animal Toughness, A Little Irritable Weakness And Descent Of The Pain-threshold, Will Bring The Worm At The Core Of All Our Usual Springs Of Delight Into Full View, And Turn Us Into Melancholy Metaphysicians.
Pain
Spring
Loss
Nothing Is So Fatiguing As The Eternal Hanging On Of An Uncompleted Task.
Motivational
Clever
Procrastination
It Is Not Probable That The Reader Will Be Satisfied With Any Of These Solutions, And Contemporary Philosophers, Even Rationalistically Minded Ones, Have On The Whole Agreed That No One Has Intelligibly Banished The Mystery Of Fact.
Philosophy
Facts
Philosopher
We Are Spinning Our Own Fates, Good Or Evil, Never To Be Undone.
Fate
Evil
Spinning
If The Grace Of God Miraculously Operates, It Probably Operates Through The Subliminal Door.
Doors
Miracle
Grace
What Interest, Zest, Or Excitement Can There Be In Achieving The Right Way, Unless We Are Enabled To Feel That The Wrong Way Is Also A Possible And A Natural Way, Nay, More, A Menacing And An Imminent Way? And What Sense Can There Be In Condemning Ourselves For Taking The Wrong Way, Unless We Need Have Done Nothing Of The Sort, Unless The Right Way Was Open To Us As Well? I Cannot Understand The Willingness To Act, No Matter How We Feel, Without The Belief That Acts Are Really Good And Bad.
Zest
Needs
Done
In Any Project The Important Factor Is Your Belief. Without Belief, There Can Be No Successful Outcome.
Inspirational
Successful
Important
Touch Is The Alpha And Omega Of Affection.
Affection
Alpha And Omega
Alphas
The Teacher's Prime Concern Should Be To Ingrain Into The Pupil That Assortment Of Habits That Shall Be Most Useful To Him Throughout Life. Education Is For Behavior, And Habits Are The Stuff Of Which Behavior Consists.
Teacher
Stuff
Behavior
The Instinct Of Ownership Is Fundamental In Man's Nature.
Wisdom
Men
Rights
Events Are Influenced By Our Very Great Desires.
Desire
Events
The Question Of Free Will Is Insoluble On Strictly Psychological Grounds.
Free Will
Psychological
Mankind's Common Instinct For Reality Has Always Held The World To Be Essentially A Theatre For Heroism.
Reality
Theatre
Heroism
If You Only Care Enough For A Result, You Will Almost Certainly Attain It. Only You Must, Then, Really Wish These Things, And Wish Them Exclusively, And Not Wish At The Same Time A Hundred Other Incompatible Things Just As Strongly.
Wish
Care
Enough
The University Most Worthy Of Rational Admiration Is That One In Which Your Lonely Thinker Can Feel Himself Lonely, Most Positively Furthered, And Most Richly Fed
Lonely
Admiration
Feds
Spiritual Energy Flows In And Produces Effects, Psychological Or Material, Within The Phenomenal World.
Spiritual
Energy
World
The Education Of Attention Would Be An Education Par Excellence
Excellence
Would Be
Attention
The One Who Thinks Over His Experiences Most, And Weaves Them Into Systematic Relations With Each Other, Will Be The One With The Best Memory.
Memories
Thinking
Experience
The World We See That Seems So Insane Is The Result Of A Belief System That Is Not Working. To Perceive The World Differently, We Must Be Willing To Change Our Belief System, Let The Past Slip Away, Expand Our Sense Of Now, And Dissolve The Fear In Our Minds.
Fear
Past
History
The Art Of Being Wise Is The Art Of Knowing What To Overlook.
Positive
Wise
Wisdom
Everything Which Is Demanded Is By That Fact A Good.
Facts
The Science Of Logic Never Made A Man Reason Rightly, And The Science Of Ethics Never Made A Man Behave Rightly. The Most Such Sciences Can Do Is To Help Us To Catch Ourselves Up And Check Ourselves, If We Start To Reason Or To Behave Wrongly; And To Criticise Ourselves More Articulately After We Have Made Mistakes.
Art
Mistake
Teaching
But Facts Are Facts, And If We Only Get Enough Of Them Theyare Sure To Combine.
Facts
Enough
Ifs
As A Rule We Disbelieve All The Facts And Theories For Which We Have No Use.
Use
Facts
Belief
A Winner's Attitude: It May Be Difficult, But It's Possible. A Loser's Attitude: It May Be Possible, But It's Too Difficult.
Attitude
May
Loser
What Excites And Interests The Looker-on At Life, What The Romances And The Statues Celebrate, And The Grim Civic Monuments Remind Us Of, Is The Everlasting Battle Of The Powers Of Light With Those Of Darkness; With Heroism Reduced To Its Bare Chance, Yet Ever And Anon Snatching Victory From The Jaws Of Death.
Life
Death
Light
Round About The Accredited And Orderly Facts Of Every Science There Ever Floats A Sort Of Dust-cloud Of Exceptional Observations, Of Occurrences Minute And Irregular And Seldom Met With, Which It Always Proves More Easy To Ignore Than To Attend To... Anyone Will Renovate His Science Who Will Steadily Look After The Irregular Phenomena, And When Science Is Renewed, Its New Formulas Often Have More Of The Voice Of The Exceptions In Them Than Of What Were Supposed To Be The Rules.
Science
Dust
Voice
Better Risk Loss Of Truth Than Chance Of Error--that Is Your Faith-vetoer's Exact Position. He Is Actively Playing His Stake As Much As The Believer Is; He Is Backing The Field Against The Religious Hypothesis, Just As The Believer Is Backing The Religious Hypothesis Against The Field.
Faith
Religious
Loss
The Mind, In Short, Works On The Data It Receives Very Much As The Sculptor Works On His Block Of Stone.
Block
Data
Mind
We Are Spinning Our Own Fates, Good Or Evil, And Never To Be Undone. Every Smallest Stroke Of Virtue Or Of Vice Leaves Its Never So Little Scar. ...nothing We Ever Do Is, In Strict Scientific Literalness, Wiped Out.
Character
Fate
Evil
Act The Part And You Will Become The Part.
Focus
Action
Footnotes -- Little Dogs Yapping At The Heels Of The Text
Dog
Writing
Littles
Your Hopes, Dreams And Aspirations Are Legitimate. They Are Trying To Take You Airborne, Above The Clouds, Above The Storms, If You Only Let Them.
Dream
Hope
Clouds
There Is No More Miserable Human Being Than One In Whom Nothing Is Habitual But Indecision.
Inspirational
Philosophical
Sadness
A Man Of Sense Is Never Discouraged By Difficulties; He Redoubles His Industry And His Diligence, He Perseveres And Infallibly Prevails At Last.
Motivational
Meaningful
Perseverance
On Pragmatistic Principles, If The Hypothesis Of God Works Satisfactorily In The Widest Sense Of The Word, It Is True.
God
Principles
Theism
Psychology Is A Science, And Teaching Is An Art; And Sciences Never Generate Arts Directly Out Of Themselves.
Art
Teaching
Psychology
What Every Genuine Philosopher (every Genuine Man, In Fact) Craves Most Is Praise Although The Philosophers Generally Call It Recognition!
Men
Rewards And Recognition
Facts
Experience, As We Know, Has A Way Of Boiling Over, And Making Us Correct Our Present Formulas.
Experience
Boiling Over
Way
The Union Of The Mathematician With The Poet, Fervor With Measure, Passion With Correctness, This Surely Is The Ideal.
Passion
Math
Unions
Science Can Tell Us What Exists; But To Compare The Worths, Both Of What Exists And Of What Does Not Exist, We Must Consult Not Science, But What Pascal Calls Our Heart.
Heart
Science
Doe
We Can Change Our Circumstances By A Mere Change Of Our Attitude.
Attitude
Circumstances
Mere
I Am No Lover Of Disorder And Doubt As Such. Rather Do I Fear To Lose Truth By This Pretension To Possess It Already Wholly.
Doubt
Lovers
Disorder
In The Matter Of Belief, We Are All Extreme Conservatives.
Matter
Belief
Extremes
We Must Be Careful Not To Confuse Data With The Abstractions We Use To Analyse Them.
Powerful
Science
Data
The Desire To Gain Wealth And The Fear To Lose It Are Our Chief Breeders Of Cowardice And Propagators Of Corruption.
Desire
Gains
Wealth
The Last Peculiarity Of Consciousness To Which Attention Is To Be Drawn In This First Rough Description Of Its Stream Is That It Is Always Interested More In One Part Of Its Object Than In Another, And Welcomes And Rejects, Or Chooses, All The While It Thinks.
Thinking
Attention
Lasts
We With Our Lives Are Like Islands In The Sea... The Islands Also Hang Together Through The Ocean's Bottom.
Love
Islands
Sea
The Lunatic's Visions Of Horror Are All Drawn From The Material Of Daily Fact. Our Civilization Is Founded On The Shambles, And Every Individual Existence Goes Out In A Lonely Spasm Of Helpless Agony.
Lonely
Civilization
Agony
At Bottom, The Whole Concern Of Religion Is With The Manner Of Our Acceptance Of The Universe.
Wise
Wisdom
Acceptance
Modern Transcendental Idealism, Emersonianism, For Instance, Also Seems To Let God Evaporate Into Abstract Ideality. Not A Deity In Concreto, Not A Superhuman Person, But The Immanent Divinity In Things, The Essentially Spiritual Structure Of The Universe, Is The Object Of The Transcendentalist Cult. In That Address Of The Graduating Class At Divinity College In 1838 Which Made Emerson Famous, The Frank Expression Of This Worship Of Mere Abstract Laws Was What Made The Scandal Of The Performance.
Letting Go
Spiritual
College
It Is Well For The World That In Most Of Us, By The Age Of Thirty, The Character Has Set Like Plaster, And Will Never Soften Again.
Birthday
Character
Age
Every Way Of Classifying A Thing Is But A Way Of Handling It For Some Particular Purpose.
Purpose
Way
Particular
If We Remembered Everything, We Should On Most Occasions Be As Ill Off As If We Remembered Nothing. It Would Take Us As Long To Recall A Space Of Time As It Took The Original Time To Elapse, And We Should Never Get Ahead With Our Thinking. All Recollected Times Undergo, Accordingly, What M. Ribot Calls Foreshortening; And This Foreshortening Is Due To The Omission Of An Enormous Number Of Facts Which Filled Them.
Thinking
Numbers
Space
There Is A Stream, A Succession Of States, Or Waves, Or Fields (or Whatever You Please To Call Them), Of Knowledge, Of Feeling, Of Desire, Of Deliberation, Etc., That Constantly Pass And Repass, And That Constitute Our Inner Life.
Educational
Philosophy
Feelings
Where Is It, This Present? It Has Melted In Our Grasp, Fled Ere We Could Touch It, Gone In The Instant Of Becoming.
Gone
Becoming
Instant
There Can Be No Final Truth In Ethics Any More Than In Physics, Until The Last Man Has Had His Experience And Said His Say.
Men
Finals
Lasts
When You Have Broken The Reality Into Concepts You Never Can Reconstruct It In Its Wholeness.
Reality
Broken
Concepts
The Mind Is Made Up By What It Feeds Upon.
Thinking
Mind
Made
There Are No Differences But Differences Of Degree Between Different Degrees Of Difference And No Difference.
Differences
Degrees
Different
An Educated Memory Depends On An Organized System Of Associations; And Its Goodness Depends On Two Of Their Peculiarities: First, On The Persistency Of The Associations; And, Second, On Their Number.
Memories
Philosophy
Educational
An Act Has No Ethical Quality Whatever Unless It Be Chosen Out Of Several All Equally Possible.
Philosophical
Quality
Ethics
Men Habitually Use Only A Small Part Of The Power Which They Actually Possess.
Men
Use
Small Parts
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.
Dog
May
Affection
What A Teacher Needs To Know About Psychology "might Almost Be Written On The Palm Of One's Hand."
Teacher
Art
Teaching
I Do Indeed Disbelieve That We Or Any Other Mortal Men Can Attain On A Given Day To Absolutely Incorrigible And Unimprovable Truth About Such Matters Of Fact As Those With Which Religions Deal. But I Reject This Dogmatic Ideal Not Out Of A Perverse Delight In Intellectual Instability. I Am No Lover Of Disorder And Doubt As Such. Rather Do I Fear To Lose Truth By This Pretension To Possess It Already Wholly.
Men
Intellectual
Doubt
The Community Stagnates Without The Impulse Of The Individual. The Impulse Dies Away Without The Sympathy Of The Community.
Friendship
Sympathy
Community
Any Object Not Interesting In Itself May Become Interesting Through Becoming Associated With An Object In Which An Interest Already Exists.
Interesting
May
Becoming
We All Have A Lifelong Habit Of Inferiority To Our Full Self..."
Self
Inferiority
Habit
All Our Life, So Far As It Has Definite Form, Is But A Mass Of Habits.
Habit
Form
Mass
For Morality Life Is A War, And The Service Of The Highest Is A Sort Of Cosmic Patriotism Which Also Calls For Volunteers.
War
Volunteer
Political
True Is The Name For Whatever Idea Starts The Verification Process, Useful Is The Name For Its Completed Function In Experience
Truth
Names
Ideas
Theory Must Mediate Between All Previous Truths And Certain New Experiences
Truth
New Experiences
Theory
It Seems The Natural Thing For Us To Listen Whilst The Europeans Talk.
Political
Politics
Natural
No More Fiendish Punishment Could Be Devised, Were Such A Thing Physically Possible, Than That One Should Be Turned Loose In Society And Remain Absolutely Unnoticed.
Punishment
Political
Politics
If You Can Change Your Mind, You Can Change Your Life.
Love
Inspirational
Motivational
We Are Stereotyped Creatures, Imitators And Copiers Of Our Past Selves.
Past
Self
Habit
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


Trending Author
Giorgio Moroder
Baz Luhrmann
Sia Furler
Karl Radek
Harold W. Dodds
Frank Lampard
Category
Information