Top 500 William James Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.”

— William James

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

— William James

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

— William James

154. “Everyone knows that on any given day there are energies slumbering in him which the incitement’s of that day do not call forth. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. The human individual usually lives far within his limits.”

— William James

155. “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

156. “The discovery of the power of our thoughts will prove to be the most important discovery of our time.”

— William James

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

— William James

158. “Wherever you are, it is your friends who make your world.”

— William James

159. “Our beliefs and our attention are the same fact.”

— William James

160. “The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires.”

— William James

161. “We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort.”

— William James

162. “It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.”

— William James

163. “So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.”

— William James

164. “Owing to the fact that all experience is a process, no point of view can ever be the last one.”

— William James

165. “The mind is made up by what it feeds upon.”

— William James

166. “Each of us is in fact what he is almost exclusively by virtue of his imitative-ness.”

— William James

167. “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

168. “No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed.”

— William James

169. “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

170. “In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.”

— William James

171. “Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture.”

— William James

172. “Mankind’s common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism.”

— William James

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

— William James

174. “Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.”

— William James

175. “The trail of the human serpent is thus over everything.”

— William James

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

— William James

177. “True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot.”

— William James

178. “Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.”

— William James

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

— William James

180. “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

181. “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

182. “The states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the Soul to exist; but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle of unity is superfluous.”

— William James

183. “A man of sense is never discouraged by difficulties; he redoubles his industry and his diligence, he perseveres and infallibly prevails at last.”

— William James

184. “We can change our circumstances by a mere change of our attitude.”

— William James

185. “Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive.”

— William James

186. “On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.”

— William James

187. “You can’t out-perform your self-image.”

— William James

188. “Spiritual energy flows in and produces effects in the phenomenal world.”

— William James

189. “Lay plans as if we were to be immortal.”

— William James

190. “Lets take full advantage of this discovery.”

— William James

191. “We must not just patch and tinker with life. We must keep renewing it. Embrace novelty and uniqueness.”

— William James

192. “Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.”

— William James

193. “The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own particular ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours.”

— William James

194. “There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough.”

— William James

195. “Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.”

— William James

196. “Our life is always deeper than we know, is always more divine than it seems, and hence we are able to survive degradations and despairs which otherwise must engulf us.”

— William James

197. “Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night.”

— William James

198. “Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.”

— William James

199. “How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young-or slender.”

— William James

200. “If this life is not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight.”

— William James

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