William James > Quotes

William James quotes (showing 1-50 of 100) "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." "Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. " "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." "The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another." "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." "Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does." "To change ones life: 1. Start immediately. 2. Do it flamboyantly. 3. No exceptions." The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it." "If you can change your mind, you can change your life." "Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact. " "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."

A short story collection covering love, death, dreams and prophecy, with a tendency to the dark side. "I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny, invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through

the crannies of the world like so many rootletss, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride."

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

"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." "Wherever you are, it is your friends who make your world."

"Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task." "Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives." "Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task." "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," "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 deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated." Craving=memohon "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.

"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."

"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"

"Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another."

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

"...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."

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

"[There are, in us] possibilities that take our breath away, and show a world wider than either physics or philistine ethics can imagine. Here is a world in which all is well, in spite of certain forms of death, death of hope, death of strength, death of responsibility, of fear and wrong, death of everything that paganism, naturalism and legalism pin their trust on."

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

"I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather I fear to lose truth by the pretension to possess it already wholly."

"Religion is a monumenta

A short story collection covering love, death, dreams and prophecy, with a tendency to the dark side. By Brett James Irvine. Stefani's world up-ends as her 21st b'day looms, she isn't the hunter, she is the one being hunted, & her predators are not human. "Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. " "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." "The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another." "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."

"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does." "The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it." "If you can change your mind, you can change your life." "Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact." "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." "We dont laugh because were happy, were happy because we laugh." "I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny, invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride." "Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours." "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." "Wherever you are, it is your friends who make your world." "Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task." "If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience." "There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference." "Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives." "Begin to be now what you will be hereafter. " "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," "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 deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated." "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. "

"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." "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" "Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another." "The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one." "...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." "It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all." "[There are, in us] possibilities that take our breath away, and show a world wider than either physics or philistine ethics can imagine. Here is a world in which all is well, in spite of certain forms of death, death of hope, death of strength, death of responsibility, of fear and wrong, death of everything that paganism, naturalism and legalism pin their trust on." "Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way." "I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather I fear to lose truth by the pretension to possess it already wholly." "Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egoism."

"A great nation is not saved by wars, it is saved by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans and empty quacks."

"Actions seems to follow feeling, but really actions 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. Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there."

"Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact." "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." "I dont sing cause im happy I'm happy cause I sing" "The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers. "It would probably astound each of us beyond measure to be let into his neighbors mind and to find how different the scenery was there from that of his own." "My experience is what I agree to attend to. "This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it." "If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick." "Damn the Absolute!"
"See the exquisite contrast of the types of mind! The pragmatist clings to facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in particular cases, and generalises. Truth, for him, becomes a class-name for all sorts of definite working-values in experience. For the rationalist it remains a pure abstraction, to the bare name of which we must defer. When the pragmatist undertakes to show in detail just why we must defer, the rationalist is unable to recognise the concretes from which his own abstraction is taken. He accuses us of denying truth; whereas we have only sought to trace exactly why people follow it and always ought to follow it. Your typical ultra-abstractions fairly shudders at concreteness: other things equal, he positively prefers the pale and spectral. If the two universes were offered, he would always choose the skinny outline rather than the rich thicket of reality. It is so much purer, clearer, nobler." "There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other."