William James Quotes

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

'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.

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

To spend life for something which outlasts 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Man lives for science as well as bread.

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

Time itself comes in drops.

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

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.

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

Belief creates the actual fact.

In business for yourself, not by yourself.

Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Truth is what works.

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

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

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

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

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

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

The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.

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

Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.