Famous Quotes from ...

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 {view}
  • These then are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.... William James {view}
  • The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.... William James {view}
  • Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact... William James {view}
  • Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.... William James {view}
  • To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.... William James {view}
  • 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 {view}
  • The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.... William James {view}
  • Emotional occasions, especially violent ones, are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements. The sudden and explosive ways in which love, jealousy, guilt, fear, remorse, or anger can seize upon one are known to everybody. . . . And emotions that come in this explosive way seldom leave things as they found them.... William James {view}
  • Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture... William James {view}
  • Education is the organization of acquired habits of conduct and tendencies to behavior .... William James {view}
  • 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 {view}
  • Truth in our ideas means their power to work.... William James {view}
  • The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.... William James {view}
  • 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 {view}
  • . . . I do not see how it is possible that creatures in such different positions and with such different powers as human individuals are, should have exactly the same functions nor should we be expected to work out identical solutions. Each, from his peculiar angle of observation, takes in a certain sphere of fact and trouble, which each must deal with in a unique manner.... William James {view}
  • We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation of material attachments, the unbridled soul, the manlier indifference, the paying our way by what we are or do and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly -- the more athletic trim, in short, the moral fighting shape.... William James {view}
  • Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power... William James {view}
  • Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent.... William James {view}
  • All natural goods perish. Riches take wings; fame is a breath; love is a cheat; youth and health and pleasure vanish.... William James {view}
  • The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.... William James {view}