Top 500 William James Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “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

102. “Strength is a facade for the proud, weakness is a mask for the lazy.”

— William James

103. “An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.”

— William James

104. “Despair lames most people, but it wakes others fully up.”

— William James

105. “Man lives for science as well as bread.”

— William James

106. “There can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and said his say.”

— William James

107. “An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.”

— William James

108. “Real servants don’t try to use God for their purposes. They let God use them for His purposes.”

— William James

109. “Success plus Self-esteem equals Pretensions.”

— William James

110. “The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.”

— William James

111. “Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain.”

— William James

112. “It is as important to cultivate your silence power as your word power.”

— William James

113. “New habits can be launched.”

— William James

114. “The good we do today becomes the happiness of tomorrow.”

— William James

115. “Instinct leads, logic does but follow.”

— William James

116. “There is a voice inside which speaks and says, “This is the real me!””

— William James

117. “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

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

— William James

119. “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

120. “Our acts of voluntary attending, as brief and fitful as they are, are nevertheless momentous and critical, determining us, as they do, to higher or lower destinies.”

— William James

121. “Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity.”

— William James

122. “The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.”

— William James

123. “We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyse them.”

— William James

124. “Man can change his life simply by changing his attitude.”

— William James

125. “In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.”

— William James

126. “A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.”

— William James

127. “The function of ignoring, of inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the function of attention itself.”

— William James

128. “Choose a self and stand by it.”

— William James

129. “A sense of humor is just common sense dancing.”

— William James

130. “To leap across an abyss, one is better served by faith than doubt.”

— William James

131. “Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.”

— William James

132. “When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion, action will.”

— William James

133. “The greatest discovery of our generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. As you think, so shall you be.”

— William James

134. “It is only in the lonely emergencies of life that our creed is tested: then routine maxims fail, and we fall back on our gods.”

— William James

135. “My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing, and I can only do one thing at a time.”

— William James

136. “There can be no existence of evil as a force to the healthy-minded individual.”

— William James

137. “The emotions aren’t always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.”

— William James

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

— William James

139. “Effort is a measure of a Man.”

— William James

140. “We are mere bundles of habits.”

— William James

141. “To neglect the wise sayings of great thinkers is to deny ourselves the truest education.”

— William James

142. “The power to move the world is in the subconcious mind.”

— William James

143. “All natural goods perish. Riches take wings; fame is a breath; love is a cheat; youth and health and pleasure vanish.”

— William James

144. “If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill. But more important than that, practicing this philosophy has made a different person of me.”

— William James

145. “Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.”

— William James

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

— William James

147. “Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us; our hour of triumph is what brings the void.”

— William James

148. “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

149. “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.”

— William James

150. “Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.”

— William James