William James Quotes on Wisdom & Knowledge (7 Quotes)

Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.

Our minds thus grow in spots and like grease spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in it stains the ancient mass but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.

Get but that peace of God which passeth understanding, and the questions of the understanding will cease from puzzling and pedantic scruples be at rest..

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.

The inner need of believing that this world of nature is a sign of something more spiritual and eternal than itself is just as strong and authoritative in those who feel it, as the inner need of uniform laws of causation ever can be in a professionally scientific head.... Our faculties of belief were not primarily given us to make orthodoxies and heresies withal, they were given us to live by. And to trust our religious demands means first of all to live in the light of them.... The part of wisdom as well as of courage is to believe what is in the line of your needs, for only by such belief is the need fulfilled. Refuse to believe, and you shall indeed be right, for you shall irretrievably perish. But believe, and again you shall be right, for you shall save yourself.