Facts about William James 
Summary
William James was a famous Philosopher from USA, who lived between January 11, 1842 and August 26, 1910.
Biography
William James was the older brother of author Henry James. After first taught medical courses at Harvard University, he was later a professor of psychology and philosophy the same place from 1876 to 1907. Despite the fact that he only worked with psychological issues in a certain phase of life, James is considered one of the most important psychologists of the head. He is also one of the founders of the so-called pragmatism, a direction in philosophy. Within psychology, he is regarded as the precursor of functionalist psychology, where psychology should prove a useful science that promotes adaptation. He has written a recognized psychological textbook in two volumes called Principles of Psychology in which he described consciousness as a continuous stream, a totality - the familiar term "stream of consciousness" comes from James. Zodiac etc.
He is born under the zodiac capricorn, who is known for Determination, Dominance, Perservering, Practical, Willful.
Our collection contains 86 quotes who is written / told by William, under the main topics: Words of Wisdom, Faith, Humor, Inspirational, Life.
Related authors: Henry James
Source / external links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James
Famous quotes by William James (86)
"The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook"
"Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact"
"This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it"
"Begin to be now what you will be hereafter"
"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does"
"Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action"
"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"
"An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible"
"An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation"
"Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune"
"A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain"
"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices"
"A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him"
"Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune"
"Belief creates the actual fact"
"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 be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking"
"To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being"
"To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced"
"To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly"
"Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind!"
"When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice"
"Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude"
"Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it"
"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"
"Wisdom is learning what to overlook"
"It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again"
"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 our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome"
"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"
"The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one"
"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"
"In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start"
"Our faith is faith in someone else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case"
"The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way"
"There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise"
"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"
"'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories"
"Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf"
"If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it"
"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook"
"To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal"
"Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results"
"The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany them"
"Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing"
"Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake"
"Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state"
"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"
"Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not"
"Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice"
"Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible"
"Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way"
"Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed"
"How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure"
"Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind"
"I don't sing because I'm happy; I'm happy because I sing"
"I will act as if what I do makes a difference"
"If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick"
"If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience"
"If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door"
"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"
"Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another"
"Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference"
"Man can alter his life by altering his thinking"
"Man lives for science as well as bread"
"Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices"
"Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly"
"Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second"
"No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better"
"Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task"
"One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling"
"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 essence of genius is to know what to overlook"
"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 greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths"
"The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it"
"The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another"
"There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers"
"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"
"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"
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