A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
- William James Quote
Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
- William James Quote
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
- William James Quote
Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.
- William James Quote
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 Quote
An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.
- William James Quote
Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
- William James Quote
Belief creates the actual fact.
- William James Quote
Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
- William James Quote
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 Quote
Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.
- William James Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.
- William James Quote
Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
- William James Quote
Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
- William James Quote
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 Quote
I don't sing because I'm happy; I'm happy because I sing.
- William James Quote
I will act as if what I do makes a difference.
- William James Quote
If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.
- William James Quote
If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
- William James Quote
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 Quote
If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.
- William James Quote
If you want a trait, act as if you already have the trait.
- William James Quote
In business for yourself, not by yourself.
- William James Quote
In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.
- William James Quote
Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.
- William James Quote
It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
- William James Quote
It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
- William James Quote
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 Quote
Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.
- William James Quote
Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
- William James Quote
Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.
- William James Quote
Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second.
- William James Quote
Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
- William James Quote
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 Quote
Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.
- William James Quote
Our faith is faith in someone else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case.
- William James Quote
Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.
- William James Quote
'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.
- William James Quote
The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany them.
- William James Quote
The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.
- William James Quote
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
- William James Quote
The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.
- William James Quote
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
- William James Quote
The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.
- William James Quote
The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
- William James Quote
The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.
- William James Quote
The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.
- William James Quote
The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.
- William James Quote
The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.
- William James Quote
The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.
- William James Quote
The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.
- William James Quote
There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.
- William James Quote
There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.
- William James Quote
There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.
- William James Quote
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.
- William James Quote
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 Quote
This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.
- William James Quote
Time itself comes in drops.
- William James Quote
To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.
- William James Quote
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 Quote
To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.
- William James Quote
To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.
- William James Quote
Truth is what works.
- William James Quote
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.
- William James Quote
We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.
- William James Quote
We don't laugh because we're happy - we're happy because we laugh.
- William James Quote
We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.
- William James Quote
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 Quote
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!
- William James Quote
When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.
- William James Quote
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 Quote
Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.
- William James Quote
Wisdom is learning what to overlook.
- William James Quote
