William James was an American philosopher and Psychology, and the principal teacher to offer a brain science course in the United States. James is viewed as a main mastermind of the late nineteenth century, one of the most persuasive thinkers of the United States, and the “Father of American brain research”.
Here are some of the Best William James Quotes
“The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.” – William James
“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” – William James
“Wherever you are, it is your friends who make your world.” – William James
“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.” – William James
“We don’t laugh because we’re happy, we’re happy because we laugh.” – William James
“Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.” – William James
“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,” – William James
“Our view of the world is truly shaped by what we decide to hear.” – William James
“The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.” – William James
“There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.” – William James
“Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.” – William James
“Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.” – William James
“If merely ‘feeling good’ could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.” – 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 any organism fails to fulfil its potentialities, it becomes sick.” – William James
“We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.” – William James
“Procrastination is attitude’s natural assassin. There’s nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task” – William James
“The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.” – William James
“Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.” – 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
“My experience is what I agree to attend to.” – William James
“The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That – with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word ‘success’ – is our national disease.” – William James
“..do every day or two something for no other reason 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.” – William James
“Belief creates the actual fact.” – William James
“I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather I fear to lose truth by the pretension to possess it already wholly.” – William James
“Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.” – William James
“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” – William James
“A sense of humour is just common sense of dancing.” – William James
“There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other.” – William James
“The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.” – William James
“This life is worth living, we can say since it is what we make it.” – William James
“A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates.” – William James
“We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood” – William James
“When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that is in itself a choice.” – William James
“The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervour with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.” – William James
“We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.” – William James
“It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.” – William James
“The strenuous life tastes better” – William James
“If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn’t seek to show that no crows are; it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white.” – William James
“I don’t sing because I’m happy. I’m happy because I sing.” – William James
“A man has as many social selves as there are distinct groups of persons about whose opinion he cares. He generally shows a different side of himself to each of these different groups.” – William James
“The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.” – William James
“Damn the Absolute!” – William James
“There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.” – William James Quotes
“To change one’s life: 1. Start immediately. 2. Do it flamboyantly. 3. No exceptions.” – William James
45th of 90 Best William James Quotes
“Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our own mind.” – William James
“Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them, or they may only have dreamed or imagined they did so.” – William James
“As a rule, we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.” – William James
“Why may we not be in the universe, as our dogs and cats are in our drawing rooms and libraries?” – William James
“The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual; the impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.” – William James
“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.” – William James
“Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.” – William James
“All our life, so far as it has a definite form, is but a mass of habits.” – William James
“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” – William James
“The lunatic’s visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.” – William James
“Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.” – William James
“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.” – William James
“Philosophy is “an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly.” – William James
“It would probably astound each of us beyond measure to be let into his neighbours’ mind and to find how different the scenery was there from that of his own.” – 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
“Wisdom is seeing something in a non-habitual manner.” – William James
“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” – William James
“Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.” – William James Quotes
“I am tired of the position of the dried-up critic and doubter. The believer is the true full man.” – William James
“Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation.” – William James
“None of us are ever who we were yesterday.” – William James
“Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.” – William James
“All religions and spiritual traditions begin with the cry “Help!” – William James
“Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain” – William James
“There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.” – William James
“There’s nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.” – William James
“Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.” – William James
“In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.” – William James
“Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish for a better kind of man, a loss of appetite for mediocrities.” – William James
“The exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess Success is our national disease” – William James
“Our experience is what we attend to” – William James
“The means have murdered the end.” – William James
“The attempt at introspective analysis… is in fact like seizing a spinning top to catch its motion, or trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see the darkness.” – William James
“I will act as if what I do makes a difference.” – William James
“Whatever is beyond this narrow rational consciousness we mistake for our only consciousness.” – William James
“If you can change your mind, you can change your life.” – 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
“Psychology is the science of mental life” – William James
“My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing.” – William James
“We know the meaning so long as no one asks us to define it.” – William James
We need only in cold blood ACT as if the thing in question were real, and keep acting as if it were real, and it will infallibly end by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real.– William James
“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
“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.” – William James
“Our intelligence cannot wall itself up alive, like a pupa in a chrysalis. It must at any cost keep on speaking terms with the universe that engendered it.” – William James
“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
