William James
American philosopher and psychologist, 1842-1910
29 quotes.
Quotes by William James
- A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices.
- A maxim of Professor James 'never to suffer a single emotion to evaporate without exacting from it some practical service.'
- A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.
- Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
- And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.
- As the art of reading (after a certain stage in one's education) is the art of skipping, so the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
- As we become permanent drunkards by so many separate drinks, so we become saints in the moral, and authorities and experts in the practical and scientific spheres, by so many separate acts and hours of work.
- Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
- But we do not attack these things concretely, and we do not begin to-day. We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort.
- 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.
- For here possibilities, not finished facts, are the realities with which we have actively to deal; and to quote my friend William Salter, of the Philadelphia Ethical Society, "as the essence of courage is to stake one's life on a possibility, so the essence of faith is to believe that the possibility exists."
- Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.
- In such a case (and it belongs to an enormous class), the part of wisdom as well as of courage is to believe what is in the line of your needs, for only by such belief is the need fulfilled.
- Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that 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.
- Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.
- So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.
- The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
- The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.
- The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
- The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.
- The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.
- 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.
- The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
- The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
- The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires.
- There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
- 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.
- When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that in itself is a choice.
- Everybody ought to do at least two things each day that he hates to do just for practice.