William James was an American philosopher and psychologist who was also trained as a physician. He is considered to be one of the most influential thinkers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is often referred to as the "Father of American Psychology." He is best known for his work on pragmatism and the philosophy of religion, as well as his writings on the philosophy of consciousness, free will, and the stream of thought. Following is our collection on famous quotes by William James on life, education, attention.
Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.
Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second.
Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
A sense of humor is just common sense dancing.
The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact.
If you want a trait, act as if you already have the trait.
Formula to live your dream: 1. Be bold. 2. Begin now, 3. No exceptions.
We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort.
The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.
William James Quotes About Life
To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly. — William James
If you can change your mind, you can change your life. — William James
To change one's life:
a. Start immediately
b. B. Do it flamboyantly
c. No exceptions
Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted. — William James
The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives. — William James
The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes. — William James
Man can alter his life by altering his thinking. — William James
Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue. — William James
Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice. — William James
The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it." "This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it." "Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact. — William James
The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one. — William James
The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. — William James
The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers. — William James
The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist. — William James
In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering. — William James
To neglect the wise sayings of great thinkers is to deny ourselves the truest education. — William James
There is a stream, a succession of states, or waves, or fields (or whatever you please to call them), of knowledge, of feeling, of desire, of deliberation, etc., that constantly pass and repass, and that constitute our inner life. — William James
The teacher's prime concern should be to ingrain into the pupil that assortment of habits that shall be most useful to him throughout life. Education is for behavior, and habits are the stuff of which behavior consists. — William James
Most men have a good memory for facts connected with their own pursuits. — William James
The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will... An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence. — William James
William James Quotes About Attention
The function of ignoring, of inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the function of attention itself. — William James
The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that it is always interested more in one part of its object than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks. — William James
So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast. — William James
We divert our attention from disease and death as much as we can; the slaughterhouses are huddled out of sight and never mentioned, so that the world we recognize officially in literature and in society is a poetic fiction far handsomer, cleaner and better than the world that really is. — William James
The prescription is that the subject must be made to show new aspects of itself; to prompt new questions; in a word, to change. From an unchanging subject the attention inevitably wanders away. — William James
From all these facts there emerges a very simple abstract program for the teacher to follow in keeping the attention of the child: Begin with the line of his native interests, and offer him objects that have some immediate connection with these. — William James
What holds attention determines action. — William James
All that we need explicitly to note is that, the more the passive attention is relied on, by keeping the material interesting; and the less the kind of attention requiring effort is appealed to; the more smoothly and pleasantly the classroom work goes on. — William James
Our beliefs and our attention are the same fact. — William James
Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention . . . But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them. — William James
William James Quotes About Pragmatism
[Pragmatism's] only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity of experience's demands, nothing being omitted. — William James
If theological ideas prove to have a value for concrete life, they will be true, for pragmatism, in the sense of being good for so much. How much more they are true, will depend entirely on their relations to the other truths that also have to be acknowledged. — William James
Ideas are so much flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives them cognitive lustre. This is why as a pragmatistI have so carefully posited 'reality' ab initio, and why throughout my whole discussion, I remain an epistemologist realist. — William James
From a pragmatic point of view, the difference between living against a background of foreigness (an indifferent Universe) and one of intimacy (a benevolent Universe) means the difference between a general habit of wariness and one of trust. — William James
William James Quotes About Love
We with our lives are like islands in the sea... The islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom. — William James
In contentment and joy are found the height and perfection of all love towards our neighbor. — William James
From faith, hope, and love, the virtues of religion referring to God, there arises a double act which bears on the spiritual communion exercised between God and us; the hearing of the word and prayer. — William James
There is a voice inside which speaks and says, "This is the real me!" — William James
The soul is stronger than its surroundings. — William James
Everyone who understands the nature of God rightly necessarily knows that God is to be believed and hoped in, that he is to be loved and called upon, and to be heard in all things. — William James
So it is with children who learn to read fluently and well: They begin to take flight into whole new worlds as effortlessly as young birds take to the sky. — William James
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. — William James
All natural goods perish. Riches take wings; fame is a breath; love is a cheat; youth and health and pleasure vanish. — William James
The love of life, at any and every level of development, is the religious impulse. — William James
William James Quotes About Religion
Religion . . . shall mean for us the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude. — William James
I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are IMPOSSIBLE. — William James
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. — William James
From the Vedas we learn a practical art of surgery, medicine, music, house building under which mechanized art is included. They are encyclopedia of every aspect of life, culture, religion, science, ethics, law, cosmology and meteorology. — William James
The first act of religion, therefore, concerns those things which are communicated to us from God. The other concerns those things which we yield to God. — William James
Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism. — William James
Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics. — William James
Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life's evils, is set free in those who have religious faith. — William James
Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true. — William James
If any one phrase could gather its (religion's) universal message, that phrase would be, - All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may suggest. — William James
William James Quotes About Truth
There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough. — William James
We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood. — William James
Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul None is more gladdening or fruitful than to know You can regenerate and make yourself what you will. — William James
As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors. — William James
We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be. — William James
Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not. — William James
True is the name for whatever idea starts the verification process, useful is the name for its completed function in experience — William James
The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons. — William James
Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality. — William James
When a thing is new, people say: ‘It is not true.’ Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: ‘It is not important.’ Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say: ‘Anyway, it is not new. — William James
William James Quotes About Habit
Don't preach too much to your pupils or abound in good talk in the abstract. Lie in wait rather for the practical opportunities, be prompt to seize those as they pass, and thus at one operation get your pupils both to think, to feel, and to do. — William James
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. — William James
Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance. — William James
Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain. — William James
Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again. — William James
All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits. — William James
Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. ... From time immemorial war has been ... the supremely thrilling excitement. — William James
Tension is a habit. Relaxing is a habit. Bad habits can be broken, good habits formed. — William James
Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase of equilibrium in such a structure is marked by what we may call a new set of habits. — William James
True to her inveterate habit, rationalism reverts to 'principles,' and thinks that when an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular solution. — William James
William James Quotes About Self
The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains; and the 'evolution' of brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms came to be so caught and jammed. — William James
There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self. — William James
Success plus Self-esteem equals Pretensions. — William James
One hears of the mechanical equivalent of heat. What we now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war: something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be incompatible. — William James
We are stereotyped creatures, imitators and copiers of our past selves. — William James
So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do. — William James
The same is true of Love, and the instinctive desire to please those whom we love. The teacher who succeeds in getting herself loved by the pupils will obtain results which one of a more forbidding temperament finds it impossible to secure. — William James
Choose a self and stand by it. — William James
You can't out-perform your self-image. — William James
To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off at the outset b abstract accusations of self-contradiction — William James
William James Quotes About World
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. — William James
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. — William James
Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world. — William James
It is your friends who make your world. — William James
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. — William James
Hence the end of the world should be awaited with all longing by all believers. — William James
Spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, within the phenomenal world. — William James
Intellectualism' is the belief that our mind comes upon a world complete in itself, and has the duty of ascertaining its contents; but has no power of re-determining its character, for that is already given. — William James
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. — William James
Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them; and no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical propositions apply. — William James
William James Quotes About Faith
Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible. — William James
Faith is the virtue by which, clinging-to the faithfulness of God, we lean upon him, so that we may obtain what he gives to us. — William James
Participation in the blessings of the union with Christ comes when the faithful have all the things needed to live well and blessedly to God. — William James
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true. — William James
It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. — William James
Therefore, the church is not absolutely necessary as an object of faith, not even for us today, for then Abraham and the other prophets would not have given assent to those things which were revealed to them from God without any intervening help of the church. — William James
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! — William James
Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible ... faith is the readiness to act in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified to us in advance. — William James
Life feels like a real fight - as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem. — William James
Our faith is faith in someone else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case. — William James
William James Quotes About Nature
The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature. — William James
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
In the exercise of God's efficiency, the decree of God comes first. This manner of working is the most perfect of all and notably agrees with the divine nature. — William James
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. — William James
Life is one long struggle between conclusions based on abstract ways of conceiving cases, and opposite conclusions prompted by our instinctive perception of them. — William James
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. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. — William James
The relative property of the Son is to be begotten, that is, so to proceed from the Father as to be a participant of the same essence and perfectly carry on the Father's nature. — William James
The simplest rudiment of mystical experience would seem to be that deepened sense of the significance of a maxim or formula which occasionally sweeps over one. — William James
The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves, have been flown for religious ideals. — William James
The old question of whether there is design is idle. The real question is what is the world, whether or not it have a designer--and that can be revealed only by the study of all nature's particulars. — William James
Positive images of the future are a powerful and magnetic force... They draw us on and energize us, give us courage and will to take on important initiatives. Negative images of the future also have a magnetism. They pull the spirit downward in the path of despair. — William James
When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that in itself is a choice. — William James
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does. — William James
The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. — William James
If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it. — William James
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. — William James
To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly. — William James
If you can change your mind, you can change your life. — William James
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. — William James
Your hopes, dreams and aspirations are legitimate. They are trying to take you airborne, above the clouds, above the storms, if you only let them. — William James
Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own; sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction — William James
Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing. — William James
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. — William James
Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. — William James
Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found? — William James
Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. — William James
The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. — William James
The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals. — William James
It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome. — William James
We don't laugh because we're happy -- we're happy because we laugh. — William James
Smitten as we are with the vision of social righteousness, a God indifferent to everything but adulation, and full of partiality for his individual favorites, lacks an essential element of largeness. — William James
To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal. — William James
Give your dreams all you've got, and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you. — William James
Cramming seeks to stamp things in by intense application immediately before the ordeal. But a thing thus learned can form but few associations. — William James
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. — William James
Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms? — William James
We with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground. — William James
The attributes of God tell us what He is and who He is. — William James
A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain. — William James
If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door. — William James
Wisdom is learning what to overlook. — William James
If you want a quality, act as if you already had it. — William James
There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness. — William James
A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him. — William James
The sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can. — William James
If you want a quality, act as if you already had it. Try the as if technique. — William James
Man lives in only one small room of the enormous house of his consciousness. — William James
He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had failed. — William James
As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different pace of its parts. Like a bird 's life, it seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings. — William James
The path to cheerfulness is to sit cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. — William James
Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture. — William James
An enormous mass of experience, both of homeopathic doctors and their patients, is invoked in favor of the efficacy of these remedies and doses. — William James
This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. — William James
We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, never to be undone. — William James
First... a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it. — William James
We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause. — William James
When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion, action will. — William James
The essence of genius is to know what to overlook. — William James
The one who thinks over his experiences most, and weaves them into systematic relations with each other, will be the one with the best memory. — William James
The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal. — William James
The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years, that minute he begins to be old. — William James
In any project the important factor is your belief. Without belief, there can be no successful outcome. — William James
Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. — William James
It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints. — William James
Sanctification is not to be understood here as a separation from ordinary use or consecration to some special use, although this meaning is often present in Scripture, sometimes referring to outward and sometimes to inward or effectual separation. — William James
If it works, it's true. — William James
The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly. — William James
Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference. — William James
We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all. — William James
We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable. — William James
To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life. — William James
This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it. — William James
The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns; all superior minds feel seriously about them, and the mind with the shortest views is simply the mind of the more shallow man. — William James
Belief creates the actual fact. — William James
Life Lessons by William James
William James taught that we should live life with purpose and passion, and strive to make the most of our potential.
He believed that our beliefs and attitudes shape our lives, and that we should strive to be open-minded and tolerant of different perspectives.
He also argued that we should take responsibility for our own lives, and strive to make the most of our opportunities.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes by William James. For popular citation styles (APA, Chicago, MLA), go to citation page.
