William James
312 quotes
Biography
William James was an American philosopher and psychologist. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, he is considered to be one of the leading thinkers of the late 19th century, one of the most influential philosophers and is often dubbed the "father of American psychology".
"The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it."
"A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain."
"Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results."
"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."
"The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes."
"Belief creates the actual fact."
"The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook."
"The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude."
"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."
"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."
"If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience."
"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."
"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?"
"It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all."
"It does not follow, because our ancestors made so many errors of fact and mixed them with their religion, that we should therefore leave off being religious at all. By being religious we establish ourselves in possession of ultimate reality at the only points at which reality is given us to guard. Our responsible concern is with our private destiny, after all."
"إن بيننا وبين الله رابطة لا تنفصم، فإذا نحن أخضعنا أنفسنا لإشرافه - سبحانه وتعالى - تحققت أمنياتنا وآمالنا كلها."
"Wisdom is seeing something in a non-habitual manner."
"the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess sucess is our national disease"
"Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly. The fundamental conceptions of psychology are practically very clear to us, but theoretically they are very confused, and one easily makes the obscurest assumptions in this science without realizing, until challenged, what internal difficulties they involve."
"There is something almost shocking in the notion of so chaste a function carrying this Kantian hurlyburly in her womb."
"The greatest discovery of our generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. As you think, so shall you be."
"To change ones life, start immediately, do it flamboyantly, no exceptions."
"The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated."
"I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier's second Essais and see no reason why his definition of free will—"the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts"—need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present—until next year—that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will."