Date: 1901-2, 1902

"In the end we fall back on the hackneyed symbolism of a mechanical equilibrium. A mind is a system of ideas, each with the excitement it arouses, and with tendencies impulsive and inhibitive, which mutually check or reinforce one another."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: 1901-2, 1902

"A mental system may be undermined or weakened by this interstitial alteration just as a building is, and yet for a time keep upright by dead habit. But a new perception a sudden emotional shock or an occasion which lays bare the organic alteration, will make the whole fabric fall together; and t...

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: 1901-2, 1902

"We must class him, like Bunyan and Tolstoy, amongst those upon whose soul the iron of melancholy left a permanent imprint."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: 1901-2, 1902

"Speaking generally, our moral and practical attitude, at any given time, is always a resultant of two sets of forces within us, impulses pushing us one way and obstructions and inhibitions holding us back. "Yes! yes!" say the impulses; "No! no !" say the inhibitions."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: 1901-2, 1902

"Few people who have not expressly reflected on the matter realize how constantly this factor of inhibition is upon us, how it contains and moulds us by its restrictive pressure almost as if we were fluids pent within the cavity of a jar."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: 1901-2, 1902

"Every individual soul, in short, like every individual machine or organism, has its own best conditions of efficiency. A given machine will run best under a certain steam-pressure, a certain amperage; an organism under a certain diet, weight, or exercise."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: 1904

"This is why I called our experiences, taken all together, a quasi-chaos."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: 1904

"The objective nucleus of every man's experience, his own body, is, it is true, a continuous percept."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: 1904

"[A]round all the nuclei of shared 'reality,' as around the Dyak's head of my late metaphor, floats the vast cloud of experiences that are wholly subjective."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: 1904

The empiricist universe is "like one of those dried human heads with which the Dyaks of Borneo deck their lodges. The skull forms a solid nucleus; but innumerable feathers, leaves, strings, beads, and loose appendices of every description float and dangle from it, and, save that they terminate in...

— James, William (1842-1910)