A Collection of Wisdom

William James Quotes

The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives

Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

The deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated

I have often thought the best way to define a man’s character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it comes upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: “This is the real me!”

What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise—although the philosophers generally call it “recognition”!

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

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.

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.

The most immutable barrier in nature is between one man’s thoughts and another’s.

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.

Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had failed.

Men’s activities are occupied into ways—in grappling with external circumstances, and in striving to set things at one in their own topsy-turvy mind.

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make very small use of their possible consciousness, and of their soul’s resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger.

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

Habit is second nature, or rather, ten times nature.

We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can

In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative as possible. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.

If you want a quality, act as if you already had it. Try the “as if” technique.

If you want a trait, act as if you already have the trait.

It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else’s type of thinking.

Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits.

Man lives for science as well as bread.

I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds.

Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

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

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

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.

Belief creates the actual fact.

Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

Spiritual energy flows in and produces effects in the phenomenal world.

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.

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

We want all our friends to tell us our bad qualities; it is only the particular ass that does so whom we can’t tolerate.

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

A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation.

Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an inhabitual way.

We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition.

The exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess Success is our national disease.

A difference which makes no difference is no difference.

The child will always attend more to what a teacher does than to what the same teacher says.

Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which interest already exists. The two associated objects grow, as it were, together; the interesting portion sheds its quality over the whole; and thus things not interesting in their own right borrow an interest which becomes as real and as strong as that of any natively interesting thing.