Q0080

William James

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Habit is the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent.
Thinker William James
School Pragmatism
Source The Principles of Psychology (on habit)
Theme Habit
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with The Principles of Psychology (on habit), within the tradition of Pragmatism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of habit, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In William James's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: William James. (n.d.). Habit is the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0080

MLA: William James. “Habit is the enormous fly-wheel of society, its….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0080.

Chicago: William James. “Habit is the enormous fly-wheel of society, its….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0080.

Same thinker

More from William James

  1. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
  2. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events.
  3. The essential achievement of the will is to attend to a difficult object and hold it fast before the mind.
  4. Consciousness…does not appear to itself chopped up in bits…It is nothing jointed; it flows.
  5. The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

All quotations by William James

Same theme

More on habit

  1. Virtues arise in us neither by nature nor contrary to nature; we are fitted by nature to receive them, and are brought to completion by habit.
  2. Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the soul is dyed by its impressions.
  3. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts.
  4. So too, by doing just acts we become just, by doing temperate acts temperate, and by doing brave acts brave.
  5. Habit and nature come to completion together and transform with each other.

Browse the habit theme