C. L. R. James Quotes

It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association

The true'to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.

An idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort of a mental total.

All of our life is but a mass of small habits - practical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual - that bear us irresistibly toward our destiny.

No living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody.

The general law is that no mental modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or followed by a bodily change.

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

We can change our circumstances by a mere change of our attitude.

Lets take full advantage of this discovery

No decision is, in itself, a decision.

Choose a self and stand by it.

We do not sing because we are happy, we are happy because we sing.

The desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption.

The most immutable barrier in nature is between one man's thoughts and another's.

Faith is one of the forces by which men live, and the total absence of it means collapse

Intelligence is a fixed goal with variable means of achieving it.

The old question of whether there is design is idle. The real question is what is the world, whether or not it have a designer--and that can be revealed only by the study of all nature's particulars.

No one sees further into a generalization than his own knowledge of detail extends.

Divinity lies all around us, but society remains too hidebound to accept that fact...The mother sea and the fountain-head of all religions lies in the mystical experiences of the individual.

There must always be a discrepncy between concepts and reality, because the former are static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing

We all have a lifelong habit of inferiority to our full self..."

That which is most personal, is most interesting.

a man does not cry because he is sad, he is sad because he cries

The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of the world.

'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.

The greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes.

Truth is what will be steadily borne out by subsequent experience

A good hypothesis in science must have other properties than those of the phenomenon it is immediately invoked to explain, otherwise it is not prolific enough.

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.

Footnotes -- little dogs yapping at the heels of the text

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.

Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain.

...as I apprehend the Buddhist doctrine of karma, I agree in principle with that.

Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night.

Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish for a better kind of man, a loss of appetite for mediocrities.

To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off at the outset b abstract accusations of self-contradiction

Habit is the great flywheel of society.

So to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end...and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear.

The subjectivist in morals, when his moral feelings are at war with the facts about him, is always free to seek harmony by toningdown the sensitiveness of the feelings.

Psychology ought certainly to give the teacher radical help.

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.

Faith is synonymous with working hypothesis.

In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly.

Mental fire is what won't burn real sticks; mental water is what won't necessarily (though of course it may) put out even a mentalfire.

The instant field of the present is at all times what I call the 'pure' experience. It is only virtually or potentially either object or subject as yet.

The amount of psychology which is necessary to all teachers need not be very great.

To know one thing thoroughly would be to know the universe.

In all primary school work the principle of multiple impressions is well recognized.

Our volitional habits depend, then, first, on what the stock of ideas is which we have; and, second, on the habitual coupling of the several ideas with action or inaction respectively.

Volition . . . takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and depends on our having a complex field of consciousness.