William James Quotes

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

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

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

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

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
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 act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.
William James

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

As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
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

Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.
William James

Belief creates the actual fact.
William James

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

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 half awake.
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

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

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

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

Everyone knows that on any given day there are energies slumbering in him which the incitement's of that day do not call forth. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. The human individual usually lives far within his limits.
William James

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you want a trait, act as if you already have the trait.
William James

In business for yourself, not by yourself.
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

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

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

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

Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.
William James

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

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

Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?
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

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

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

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

Spiritual energy flows in and produces effects in the phenomenal world.
William James

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