Quotes By William James

We don't laugh because we're happy - we're happy because we laugh.

Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

Belief creates the actual fact.

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.

Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.

Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.

If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.

A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.

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.

Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.

To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.

Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.

To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.

Our faith is faith in someone else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case.

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.

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.

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.

An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.

Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.

Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not.