William James Quotes

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it.

The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast 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.

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

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.

Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own; sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction

We do not sing because we are happy, we are happy because we sing.

Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.

Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies … and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to "keep" by force of mere inertia.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Belief creates the actual fact.

[Religion is] the attempt to be in harmony with an unseen order of things.

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.

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.

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

This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.

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

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

When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.

The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.

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?

I don't sing because I'm happy; I'm happy because I sing.

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

The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.

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.

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.

Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.

Your hopes, dreams and aspirations are legitimate. They are trying to take you airborne, above the clouds, above the storms, if you only let them.

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

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

Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again.

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

The exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess Success is our national disease.

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.

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.

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

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.

There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood bu those who hear it.

I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds.

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

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

Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.

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

We want all our friends to tell us our bad qualities; it is only the particular ass that does so whom we can't tolerate.

He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had failed.

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

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome.

To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.

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

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

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.

The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years, that minute he begins to be old.

There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere.

To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.

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

Each of us is in fact what he is almost exclusively by virtue of his imitative-ness.

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.

Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

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

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.

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

Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture.

The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.

The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.

A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.

Religious awe is the same organic thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain gorge.

Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.

Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. ... From time immemorial war has been ... the supremely thrilling excitement.

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make very small use 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.

The emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.