William James's Quotes

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

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.

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

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

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

Truth is what works.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

I will act as if what I do makes a difference.

Man lives for science as well as bread.

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

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

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

The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.

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

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

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

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

In business for yourself, not by yourself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time itself comes in drops.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

'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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.

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.

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.

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

Belief creates the actual fact.

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

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

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

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

Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.

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

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

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

The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.

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.

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

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

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