William James Quotes

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

- William James

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.

- William James

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

- William James

A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.

- William James

Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.

- William James

One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.

- William James

Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.

- William James

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

- William James

The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany them.

- William James

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

- William James

Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.

- William James

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

- William James

We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

- William James

Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

- William James

Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.

- William James

Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results.

- William James

No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.

- William James

There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse.

- William James

Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.

- William James

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.

- William James

It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.

- William James

The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.

- William James

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

- William James

If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.

- William James

Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.

- William James

The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.

- William James

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.

- William James

Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.

- William James

Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

- William James

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

- William James

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

- William James

'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.

- William James

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

- William James

Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.

- William James

Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.

- William James

Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.

- William James

There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.

- William James

Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

- William James

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

- William James

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

- William James

Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not.

- William James

Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second.

- William James

There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.

- William James

The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.

- William James

What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!

- William James

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

- William James

The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.

- William James

We don't laugh because we're happy - we're happy because we laugh.

- William James

Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.

- William James

In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.

- William James

Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.

- William James

Our faith is faith in someone else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case.

- William James

To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.

- William James

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

- William James

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.

- William James

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.

- William James

Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.

- William James

An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.

- William James

To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.

- William James

If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door.

- William James

The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.

- William James

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

- William James

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.

- William James

A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.

- William James

Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.

- William James

Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.

- William James

The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.

- William James

The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.

- William James

To spend life for something which outlasts it.

- William James

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.

- William James

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

- William James

Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind!

- William James

Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.

- William James

If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.

- William James

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

- William James

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

- William James

This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.

- William James

If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.

- William James

Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.

- William James

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.

- William James

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

- William James

Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

- William James

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.

- William James

If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.

- William James

Belief creates the actual fact.

- William James

Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.

- William James

Truth is what works.

- William James

Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.

- William James

If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.

- William James

Time itself comes in drops.

- William James

When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.

- William James

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

- William James

Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.

- William James

I don't sing because I'm happy; I'm happy because I sing.

- William James

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

- William James

To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.

- William James

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.

- William James

The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.

- William James

Man lives for science as well as bread.

- William James