Quotes By William James

Truth is what works.

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.

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.

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

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

In business for yourself, not by yourself.

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

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

The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany them.

The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.

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.

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

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

This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.

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.

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.

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.

Belief creates the actual fact.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.