William James Quotes And Sayings

It Is Wrong Always, Everywhere, And For Everyone, To Believe Anything Upon Insufficient Evidence.

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.

We Have To Live Today By What Truth We Can Get Today And Be Ready Tomorrow To Call It Falsehood.

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.

Great Emergencies And Crises Show Us How Much Greater Our Vital Resources Are Than We Had Supposed.

Begin To Be Now What You Will Be Hereafter.

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.

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.

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.

Nothing Is So Fatiguing As The Eternal Hanging On Of An Uncompleted Task.

If Any Organism Fails To Fulfill Its Potentialities, It Becomes Sick.

In The Dim Background Of Mind We Know What We Ought To Be Doing But Somehow We Cannot Start.

Metaphysics Means Nothing But An Unusually Obstinate Effort To Think Clearly.

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.

Compared To What We Ought To Be, We Are Half Awake.

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.

The Ideas Gained By Men Before They Are Twenty-five Are Practically The Only Ideas They Shall Have In Their Lives.

The Greatest Discovery Of My Generation Is That A Human Being Can Alter His Life By Altering His Attitudes.

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.

Genius... Means Little More Than The Faculty Of Perceiving In An Unhabitual Way.

The Community Stagnates Without The Impulse Of The Individual. The Impulse Dies Away Without The Sympathy Of The Community.

Our Esteem For Facts Has Not Neutralized In Us All Religiousness. It Is Itself Almost Religious. Our Scientific Temper Is Devout.

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 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.

Our Faith Is Faith In Someone Else's Faith, And In The Greatest Matters This Is Most The Case.

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.

Knowledge About Life Is One Thing; Effective Occupation Of A Place In Life, With Its Dynamic Currents Passing Through Your Being, Is Another.

Is Life Worth Living? It All Depends On The Liver.

The Art Of Being Wise Is The Art Of Knowing What To Overlook.

We Are Doomed To Cling To A Life Even While We Find It Unendurable.

If The Grace Of God Miraculously Operates, It Probably Operates Through The Subliminal Door.

A Man Has As Many Social Selves As There Are Individuals Who Recognize Him.

We Never Fully Grasp The Import Of Any True Statement Until We Have A Clear Notion Of What The Opposite Untrue Statement Would Be.

This Life Is Worth Living, We Can Say, Since It Is What We Make It.

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.

The Best Argument I Know For An Immortal Life Is The Existence Of A Man Who Deserves One.

I Don't Sing Because I'm Happy; I'm Happy Because I Sing.

Many People Think They Are Thinking When They Are Merely Rearranging Their Prejudices.

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 World Is All The Richer For Having A Devil In It, So Long As We Keep Our Foot Upon His Neck.

To Be A Real Philosopher All That Is Necessary Is To Hate Some One Else's Type Of Thinking.

Man Lives For Science As Well As Bread.

What Every Genuine Philosopher (Every Genuine Man, In Fact) Craves Most Is Praise Although The Philosophers Generally Call It Recognition!

Those Thoughts Are Truth Which Guide Us To Beneficial Interaction With Sensible Particulars As They Occur, Whether They Copy These In Advance Or Not.

'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.

The Greatest Enemy Of Any One Of Our Truths May Be The Rest Of Our Truths.

In Business For Yourself, Not By Yourself.

To Spend Life For Something Which Outlasts It.

Where Quality Is The Thing Sought After, The Thing Of Supreme Quality Is Cheap, Whatever The Price One Has To Pay For It.

An Idea, To Be Suggestive, Must Come To The Individual With The Force Of Revelation.