At bottom, the whole concern of religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe.

We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can. . . . The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot

The suspicion is in the air nowadays that the superiority of one of our formulas to another may not consist so much in its literal 'objectivity,' as in subjective qualities like its usefulness, its 'elegance,' or its congruity with our residual beliefs

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.

Emotional occasions, especially violent ones, are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements. The sudden and explosive ways in which love, jealousy, guilt, fear, remorse, or anger can seize upon one are known to everybody. . . . And emotions that come in this explosive way seldom leave things as they found them.