Quote #26

Properly speaking, a man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognise him.

More from William James

  1. In its widest possible sense, however, a man's Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers,…
  2. So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.
  3. An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.
  4. Creatures extremely low in the intellectual scale may have conception. All that is required is that they should recognize the same experien…
  5. 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 …
  6. Let any one try, I will not say to arrest, but to notice or attend to, the present moment of time. One of the most baffling experiences occ…
  7. As the brain-changes are continuous, so do all these consciousnesses melt into each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but one …
  8. Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

All William James quotes