Famous Quotes

Quotes by William James

• The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.
• The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
• The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.
• The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
• The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
• 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.
• The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
• The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.
• The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.
• The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.
• 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.
• 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.
• There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.
• 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.
• This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.
• Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.
• Time itself comes in drops.
• To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.
• To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.
• Truth is what works.
• 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.