Quotes By William James

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

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.

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

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

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.

Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.

If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.

I will act as if what I do makes a difference.

No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.

One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.

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

The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind!

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

Man lives for science as well as bread.

In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.

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.

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.

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

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.