Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can’t say it clearly you don’t understand it yourself.

I never expected this to catch on in the way it did! Of course similar observations have been made by any number of people, and the distinction is obvious to anyone who thinks about the...

The self has the characteristic that it is an object to itself, and that characteristic distinguishes it from other objects and from the body.

Like Prince von Bismarck in diplomacy, I have no secrets.

By what criterion… can we distinguish among the numberless effects, that are also causes, and among the causes that may, for aught we can know, be also effects, – how can we distinguish which are...

An utterance can have Intentionality, just as a belief has Intentionality, but whereas the Intentionality of the belief is intrinsic the Intentionality of the utterance is derived.

Useless knowledge can be made directly contributory to a force of sound and disinterested public opinion.

Imagery is not past but present. It rests with what we call our mental processes to place these images in a temporal order.

The result has been that although few conservative Presbyterian churches actually worship in the Puritan way, the Puritan theology of worship remains the standard orthodoxy among them. This discrepancy sometimes leads to guilty consciences.

I think that consciousness has always been the most important topic in the philosophy of mind, and one of the most important topics in cognitive science as a whole, but it had been surprisingly neglected...

To be interested in the public good we must be disinterested, that is, not interested in goods in which our personal selves are wrapped up.

Organized Christianity has always represented immortality as a sort of common heritage; but I never could see why spiritual life should not be conditioned on the same terms as all life, i. e., correspondence with...

If they are, then the only ultimate truths are the particulars of concrete experience, and no postulate or general assumption is inherent in science until its proceedings become systematic, or the truths already reached give...

I want to block some common misunderstandings about “understanding”: In many of these discussions one finds a lot of fancy footwork about the word “understanding.”

As far as I know, I have no pride of opinion.

In wartime we identify ourselves with the nation, and its interests are the interests of our primal selves.

What is it in you that brings you to a spiritual teacher in the first place? It’s not the spirit in you, since that is already enlightened, and has no need to seek. No, it...

It probably helps that my background is in the sciences and I can speak the scientists’ language.

To so enter into it in nature and art that the enjoyed meanings of life may become a part of living is the attitude of aesthetic appreciation.

Perhaps one reason for the falling-off of belief in a continuance of conscious existence is to be found in the quality of life that most of us lead. There is not much in it with...

Let one persuade many, and he becomes confirmed and convinced, and cares for no better evidence.

I will argue that in the literal sense the programmed computer understands what the car and the adding machine understand, namely, exactly nothing.

Assuming that man has a distinct spiritual nature, a soul, why should it be thought unnatural that under appropriate conditions of maladjustment, his soul might die before his body does; or that his soul might...

Man lives in a world of meaning.

Most of us, I suspect, prefer our teachers to be of the Nice Guy variety.

As might be supposed, my parents were quite poor, but we somehow never seemed to lack anything we needed, and I never saw a trace of discontent or a failure in cheerfulness over their lot...

People have managed to avert their eyes and hope for the best.

Warfare is an utterly stupid method of settling differences of interest between different nations.

Perhaps the prevalence of pedantry may be largely accounted for by the common error of thinking that, because useful knowledge should be remembered, any kind of knowledge that is at all worth learning should be...

Natural Selection never made it come to pass, as a habit of nature, that an unsupported stone should move downwards rather than upwards. It applies to no part of inorganic nature, and is very limited...

In many cases it is a matter for decision and not a simple matter of fact whether x understands y; and so on.

Actually, I think most people accept the existence of qualia.

No very sharp line can be drawn between social psychology and individual psychology.

I rise to taste the dawn, and find that love alone will shine today.

Concerning culture as a process, one would say that it means learning a great many things and then forgetting them; and the forgetting is as necessary as the learning.

Sense data are much more controversial than qualia, because they are associated with a controversial theory of perception – that one perceives the world by perceiving one’s sense-data, or something like that.

What gives it its human character is that the individual through language addresses himself in the role of the others in the group and thus becomes aware of them in his own conduct.