Q0346

William James

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
Thinker William James
School Pragmatism
Source The Principles of Psychology XXII
Theme Wisdom
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with The Principles of Psychology XXII, 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 wisdom, 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.). The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0346

MLA: William James. “The art of being wise is the art….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0346.

Chicago: William James. “The art of being wise is the art….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0346.

Same thinker

More from William James

  1. Habit is the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent.
  2. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
  3. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events.
  4. The essential achievement of the will is to attend to a difficult object and hold it fast before the mind.
  5. Consciousness…does not appear to itself chopped up in bits…It is nothing jointed; it flows.

All quotations by William James

Same theme

More on wisdom

  1. The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.
  2. What I do not know, I do not claim to know.
  3. Let us not become haters of argument — that is a great danger to the soul.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Of all that wisdom provides for the happiness of a whole life, by far the greatest is the possession of friendship.

Browse the wisdom theme