William James Quotes & William James Sayings

The moral flabbiness born of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That - with the squalid interpretation put on the word success - is our national disease. William James "Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact." William James "From a pragmatic point of view, the difference between living against a background of foreigness (an indifferent Universe) and one of intimacy (a benevolent Universe) means the difference between a general habit of wariness and one of trust." William James Sayings "The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it." William James . . . I do not see how it is possible that creatures in such different positions and with such different powers as human individuals are, should have exactly the same functions nor should we be expected to work out identical solutions. Each, from his peculiar angle of observation, takes in a certain sphere of fact and trouble, which each must deal with in a unique manner. William James Quotes A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. William James A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices. William James A little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians. William James A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows. William James A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed. William James Remarks Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune. William James Remarks Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does. William James Sayings Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action. William James Sayings 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 Adages All natural goods perish. Riches take wings; fame is a breath; love is a cheat; youth and health and pleasure vanish. William James An experience, perceptual or conceptual, must conform to reality in order to be true. William James Quotations An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: 'There is very little difference between one man and another, but what there is is very important William James As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate! William James Quotes As a rule we disbelieve all facts and theories for which we have no use William James Popular Quotes Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact. William James Begin to be now what you will be hereafter. William James Remarks Belief creates the actual fact. William James Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact. William James Remarks Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact William James Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me. William James Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing song. William James Remarks Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing. William James Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. We are making use of only a small part of our mental and physical resources. 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 Cramming seeks to stamp things in by intense application immediately before the ordeal. But a thing thus learned can form but few associations. William James Do every day or two something 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 Adages Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance. William James Popular Quotes 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 Everybody ought to do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice. William James Quotations Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice. William James Failure, then, failure! so the world stamps us at every turn. We strew it with our blunders, our misdeeds, our lost opportunities, with all the memorials of our inadequacy to our vocation. And with what a damning emphasis does it then blot us out! No easy fine, no mere apology or formal expiation, will satisfy the world's demands, but every pound of flesh exacted is soaked with all its blood. The subtlest forms of suffering known to man are connected with the poisonous humiliations incidental to these results. William James Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible William James Few of us are not in some way infirm, or even diseased; and our very infirmities help us unexpectedly. William James Popular Quotes Footnotes - little dogs yapping at the heels of the text William James For him who confesses, shams are over and realities have begun; he has exteriorized his rottenness. If he has not actually got rid of it, he at least no longer smears it over with a hypocritical show of virtue -- he lives at least upon a basis of veracity. William James For morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers. William James Adages Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it. William James Genius ... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way. William James Genius is the capacity for seeing relationships where lesser men see none. William James Quotations Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way. William James Popular Quotes Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way William James Give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your hold, resign the care of your destiny to higher powers, be genuinely indifferent as to what becomes of it all and you will find not only that you gain a perfect inward relief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods you sincerely thought you were renouncing. William James Quotations Habit is thus the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves The Children of Fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. William James He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had tried and failed. William James Adages History is a bath of blood. William James How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well? William James How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young -- or slender. William James Popular Quotes 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 Sayings Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives. William James Remarks I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molecular forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, and yet rending the hardest monuments of man's pride, if you give them time. The bigger the unit you deal with, the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed. William James Sayings I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I am for those tiny, invisible loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capil William James I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monumentos of man's pride. William James Quotations I don't see how an epigram, being a bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ William James I don't sing because I'm happy; I'm happy because I sing. William James I have often thought the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it comes upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: ''This is the real me!''. William James If a man's good for nothing else, he can at least teach philosophy. William James If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick. William James Popular Quotes If evolution and the survival of the fittest be true at all, the destruction of prey and of human rivals must have been among the most important. . . . It is just because human bloodthirstiness is such a primitive part of us that it is so hard to eradicate, especially when a fight or a hunt is promised as part of the fun. William James Sayings If the 'searching of our heart and reins' be the purpose of this human drama, then what is sought seems to be what effort we can make. He who can make none is but a shadow; he who can make much is a hero. 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 Adages If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it. William James Adages If you want a quality, act as if you already had it. William James If you want a quality, act as if you already had it. Try the 'as if' technique. William James Immortality is but a way of saying that the determination of expectancy is the essential factor of rationality. William James Remarks In every concrete individual, there is a uniqueness that defies formulation. We can feel the touch of it and recognize its taste, so to speak, relishing or disliking, as the case may be, but we can give no ultimate account of it, and we have in the end simply to admire the Creator. William James Adages In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start. William James Quotes In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering. William James It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call "something there," more deep and more general than any of the special and particular "senses" by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed. William James It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. 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 Popular Quotes It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult undertaking which, more than anything else, will determine its successful outcome. William James It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. William James Remarks Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don't want to do. William James Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought. William James Let anyone try to cut a thought across the middle and get a look at its section, and he will see how difficult the introspective observation. . . . is. The rush of the thought is always so headlong that it almost always brings us up at the conclusion before we can arrest it. [Introspective analysis] is in fact like seizing a spinning top to catch its motion, or trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness looks. William James Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference. William James Man can alter his life by altering his thinking. William James Man, biologically considered, and whatever else he may be in the bargain, is simply the most formidable of all the beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own species William James Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. William James Quotations Men's activities are occupied into ways -- in grappling with external circumstances and in striving to set things at one in their own topsy-turvy mind. William James Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed. William James Remarks Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his lttle finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed. William James Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second. William James Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second. William James Much of what we call evil can often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer's inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight William James Quotations New habits can be launched . . . on condition of there being new stimuli and new excitements. William James Popular Quotes Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night. 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 retain entirely unaffected for the better. William James Quotes No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one have not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With good intentions, hell proverbially is paved. William James Remarks Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task William James Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul None is more gladdening or fruitful than to know You can regenerate and make yourself what you will. William James Sayings Often Quoted in forms that correspond only loosely to Hugo's original words, for example: No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come. An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of a revelation. William James Old age has the last word: the purely naturalistic look at life, however enthusiastically it may begin, is sure to end in sadness. . . . This sadness lies at the heart of every merely positivistic, agnostic, or naturalistic scheme of philosophy. William James Popular Quotes One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say. William James Quotes Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom. William James Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture William James Quotes Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture. William James Quotations Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. If you protest, my friend, wait till you arrive there yourself! William James Quotes Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be they principles, under penalty of endless inconsistency and frustration. William James Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. William James Sayings Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power William James Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. William James Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?Pragmatism (1907) William James Psychology is the Science of Mental Life, both of its phenomena and their conditions. William James Religion is the monumental chapter in the history of human egotism. William James Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life. William James Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life. The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902 William James Religious awe is the same organic thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain gorge William James Quotes Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law. William James Sayings So far war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community. 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 Success plus Self-esteem equals Pretensions. William James Adages Tell him to live by yes and no -- yes to everything good, no to everything bad. William James The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one. William James Sayings The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. William James The belief in free-will is not in the least incompatible with the belief in Providence, provided you do not restrict the Providence to fulminating nothing but fatal decrees. William James Quotes The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one. William James Quotations The best use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts life. William James Quotes The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community. William James The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated. William James The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. William James The emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action. William James The emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action William James Quotes The essence of genius is to know what to overlook. William James The further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible and merely ''understandable'' world. Name it the mystical region, or the supernatural region, whichever you choose. So far as our ideal impulses originate in this region (and most of them do originate in it, for we find them possessing us in a way for which we cannot articulately account), we belong to it in a more intimate sense than that in which we belong to the visible world, for we belong in the most intimate sense wherever our ideals belong. William James Quotes The great use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts it. William James Remarks The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. William James Remarks The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude. William James Remarks The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind. William James The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes. William James The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can change his life by changing his attitude of mind William James The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. William James Remarks The greatest discovery of our generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. As you think, so shall you be. William James The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths. William James The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives William James Sayings The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it. William James Popular Quotes The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another. William James Remarks The health of nations is more important than the wealth of nations. 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 fashioning our characters in the wrong way. 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 Quotations The laws that Charondas gave to Catana,... A man might divorce his wife, or a wife her husband, said Charondas, but then he or she must not marry anyone younger than the divorced mate. William James The man whose acquisitions stick is the man who is always achieving and advancing whilst his neighbors, spending most of their time in relearning what they once knew but have forgotten, simply hold their own. William James Remarks The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years, that minute he begins to be old. William James Quotations The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That - with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word 'success' - is our national disease. William James The most violent revolutions in an individual's beliefs leave most of his old order standing. Time and space, cause and effect, nature and history, and one's own biography remain untouched. New truth is always a go-between, a smoother-over of transitions. It marries old opinion to new fact so as ever to show a minimum of jolt, a maximum of continuity. William James The path to cheerfulness is to sit cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. William James Remarks The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers. William James Sayings The sin of Science is to attain conceptions so adequate and exact that we shall never need to change them. There is an everlasting struggle in every mind between the tendency to keep unchanged, the tendency to renovate its ideas. Our education is a ceaseless compromise between the conservative and the progressive factors. William James Quotations 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 trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds. William James The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal William James The university most worthy of rational admiration is that one in which your lonely thinker can feel himself lonely, most positively furthered, and most richly fed William James The unrest which keeps the never-stopping clock metaphysics going is the thought that the non-existence of this world is just as possible as its existence. 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 Quotes There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self. William James Popular Quotes There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision William James Sayings There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. William James There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it. William James There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers. William James These then are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact. William James These, then, are my last words to you: Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create that fact.Is Life Worth Living? William James This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it. William James This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. William James Those who have suffered much become very bitter or very gentle. 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 To change one's life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly. No exceptions. William James To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly. William James To make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy . . . we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. William James Sayings To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal. William James Remarks Truth is what works. William James Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their "agreement," as falsity means their disagreement, with "reality." William James Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them; which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts' themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them. William James Popular Quotes We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar. William James Sayings We don't laugh because we're happy -- we're happy because we laugh. William James Adages We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We postpone and postpone, until those smiling possibilities are dead. William James Quotations We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition. William James We have the right to believe at our own risk any hypothesis that is live enough to tempt our will. William James We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood. William James We need only in cold blood to act as if the thing in question were real and it will infallibly end by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real 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 Popular Quotes When a thing is new, people say: 'It is not true.' Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: 'It is not important.' Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say: 'Anyway, it is not new.' William James Remarks When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in. William James When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome William James When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion. William James Remarks When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness. William James When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice. William James Remarks 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 Quotes 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 Sayings Wisdom is learning what to overlook. William James Popular Quotes With no attempt there can be no failure; with no failure, no humiliation. So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do. . . . William James [Thinking is] what a great many people think they are doing when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. William James [T]he sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. William James [T]he true is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as the right is only the expedient in the way of our thinking. William James Quotes