“The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.”
― William James (1842-1910)
“The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.”
― William James (1842-1910)
“We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.”
― William James (1842-1910)
“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”
― William James (1842-1910)
“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.”
― William James (1842-1910)
“If you can change your mind, you can change your life.”
― William James (1842-1910)
“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.”
― William James (1842-1910)
“Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.”
― William James (1842-1910)
“My experience is what I agree to attend to.”
― William James (1842-1910)
“Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.”
― William James (1842-1910)
“Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.”
― William James (1842-1910)
“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.”
― William James (1842-1910)
“Belief creates the actual fact.”
― William James (1842-1910)
“Procrastination is attitude's natural assassin. There's nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task”
― William James (1842-1910)
“Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.”
― William James (1842-1910)
“Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.”
― William James (1842-1910)
“A sense of humor is just common sense dancing.”
― William James (1842-1910)
“we have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood”
― William James (1842-1910)
“The strenuous life tastes better”
― William James (1842-1910)
“The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers. ”
― William James (1842-1910)
“Selection is the very keel on which our mental ship is built. And in this case of memory its utility is obvious. If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing.”
― William James (1842-1910)
“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.”
― William James (1842-1910)
“The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual; the impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.”
― William James (1842-1910)
“The attempt at introspective analysis... is in fact like seizing a spinning top to catch its motion, or trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see the darkness.”
― William James (1842-1910)
“Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.”
― William James (1842-1910)
"The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. 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".
― William James (1842-1910)
"Man is essentially the imitative animal. His whole educability and in fact the whole history of civilization depend on this trait, which his strong tendencies to rivalry, jealousy, and acquisitiveness reinforce."
— William James (1842-1910)