William James Quotes

If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.
William James

Leadership, Care, Enough

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

Heart, Seems, Spite

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

Truth, Thoughts, Whether

Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.
William James

Truth, Long, Nothing

When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.
William James

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

Sick, Fails, Fulfill

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

Life, Greatest, Spend

Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.
William James

Everything, Done, Makes

Truth is what works.
William James

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

Truth, Today, Live

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

Education, Good, College

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

Long, Keep, Devil

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

Faith, Failure, True

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

Life, Thinking, Blame

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

Thinking, Prejudices, Merely

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

Life, Between, Surprise

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

Life, Find, While

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

Idea, Individual, Force

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

Give, Young, Become

Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
William James

Means, Genius, Faculty

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

Great, Show, Greater

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

Makes, Act, Difference

If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door.
William James

God, Through, Door

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

Work, Character, Feeling

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

Life, Knowledge, Through

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Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Philosopher

Born: January 11, 1842

Died: August 26, 1910

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Cite this Page: Citation

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