Quotes By William James

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

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

What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!

Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.

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

The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.

The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.

Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.

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

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.

Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.

'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse.

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.

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

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

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.

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

Truth is what works.

Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.

Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.

There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.

In business for yourself, not by yourself.

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

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